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HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


LEAF  AND    TENDRIL 


I 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 


BY 


JOHN   BURROUGHS 


BOSTON    AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 
re??,  Cambrit)0e 

1908 


COPYRIGHT   1908  BY  JOHN   BURROUGHS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  April  /Qo8 

BIOIOGY 

I 


BIOLOGY 
LIBRARY 


PREFACE 


As  most  of  the  essays  in  this  volume  were  written  in 
a  little  bark-covered  study  that  •  is  surrounded  on 
all  sides  by  vineyards,  I  have  thought  it  not  inap- 
propriate for  me  to  go  to  the  vine  for  a  title  for  the 
collection.  The  "leaf"  may  stand  very  well  for  the 
nature  sketches,  and  the  "  tendril "  may  symbolize 
those  other  papers  in  which  I  have  groped  my  way 
in  some  of  the  great  problems,  seeking  some  law 
or  truth  to  cling  to.  The  tendril  is  blind,  but  it  is 
sensitive  and  outreaching,  and  aided  by  the  wind, 
never  ceases  to  feel  this  way  and  that  for  support. 
Whatever  it  touches  it  clings  to.  One  vine  will  cling 
to  another,  or  one  arm  cling  to  another  arm  of  the 
same  vine.  It  has  no  power  to  select  or  discriminate 
—  its  one  overmastering  impulse  is  to  cling,  no  mat- 
ter to  what.  Where  the  tendril  strikes  the  wire,  or 
hooks  that  sensitive  finger  around  it,  how  quickly  it 
tightens  its  hold  and  winds  itself  round  and  round ! 
In  time  it  becomes  almost  as  hard  as  the  wire  itself. 

I,  too,  have  groped  my  way  more  or  less  blindly 
in  some  of  the  great  questions  that  confront  us  in 
this  world  vineyard,  and  have  clung  to  what  I 
could  find,  maybe  sometimes  only  to  my  own  con- 
ceits or  vague  vaticinations. 

The  vines  have  other  hints  for  me  which  I  try  to 
v 


LEAF   AND    TENDRIL 

I 

THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 


I  DO  not  purpose  to  attempt  to  tell  my  reader 
how  to  see  things,  but  only  to  talk  about  the 
art  of  seeing  things,  as  one  might  talk  of  any  other 
art.  One  might  discourse  about  the  art  of  poetry, 
or  of  painting,  or  of  oratory,  without  any  hope  of 
making  one's  readers  or  hearers  poets  or  painters 
or  orators. 

The  science  of  anything  may  be  taught  or  ac- 
quired by  study;  the  art  of  it  comes  by  practice  or 
inspiration.  The  art  of  seeing  things  is  not  some- 
thing that  may  be  conveyed  in  rules  and  precepts; 
it  is  a  matter  vital  in  the  eye  and  ear,  yea,  in  the 
mind  and  soul,  of  which  these  are  the  organs.  I 
have  as  little  hope  of  being  able  to  tell  the  reader 
how  to  see  things  as  I  would  have  in  trying  to  tell 
him  how  to  fall  in  love  or  to  enjoy  his  dinner. 
Either  he  does  or  he  does  not,  and  that  is  about  all 
there  is  of  it.  Some  people  seem  born  with  eyes  in 
their  heads,  and  others  with  buttons  or  painted 
marbles,  and  no  amount  of  science  can  make  the 

1 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

one  equal  to  the  other  in  the  art  of  seeing  things. 
The  great  mass  of  mankind  are,  in  this  respect, 
like  the  rank  and  file  of  an  army :  they  fire  vaguely 
in  the  direction  of  the  enemy,  and  if  they  hit,  it  is 
more  a  matter  of  chance  than  of  accurate  aim.  But 
here  and  there  is  the  keen-eyed  observer;  he  is 
the  sharpshooter;  his  eye  selects  and  discriminates, 
his  purpose  goes  to  the  mark. 

Even  the  successful  angler  seems  born,  and  not 
made;  he  appears  to  know  instinctively  the  ways 
of  trout.  The  secret  is,  no  doubt,  love  of  the  sport. 
Love  sharpens  the  eye,  the  ear,  the  touch;  it 
quickens  the  feet,  it  steadies  the  hand,  it  arms 
against  the  wet  and  the  cold.  What  we  love  to  do, 
that  we  do  well.  To  know  is  not  all;  it  is  only 
half.  To  love  is  the  other  half.  Wordsworth's  poet 
was  contented  if  he  might  enjoy  the  things  which 
others  understood.  This  is  generally  the  attitude 
of  the  young  and  of  the  poetic  nature.  The  man 
of  science,  on  the  other  hand,  is  contented  if  he 
may  understand  the  things  that  others  enjoy:  that 
is  his  enjoyment.  Contemplation  and  absorption 
for  the  one;  investigation  and  classification  for  the 
other.  We  probably  all  have,  in  varying  degrees, 
one  or  the  other  of  these  ways  of  enjoying  Nature : 
either  the  sympathetic  and  emotional  enjoyment  of 
her  which  the  young  and  the  artistic  and  the  poetic 
temperament  have,  or  the  enjoyment  through  our 
knowing  faculties  afforded  by  natural  science,  or,  it 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

may  be,  the  two  combined,  as  they  certainly  were 
in  such  a  man  as  Tyndall. 

But  nothing  can  take  the  place  of  love.  Love  is 
the  measure  of  life:  only  so  far  as  we  love  do  we 
really  live.  The  variety  of  our  interests,  the  width 
of  our  sympathies,  the  susceptibilities  of  our  hearts 
—  if  these  do  not  measure  our  lives,  what  does  ? 
As  the  years  go  by,  we  are  all  of  us  more  or  less 
subject  to  two  dangers,  the  danger  of  petrifaction 
and  the  danger  of  putrefaction ;  either  that  we  shall 
become  hard  and  callous,  crusted  over  with  cus- 
toms and  conventions  till  no  new  ray  of  light  or  of 
joy  can  reach  us,  or  that  we  shall  become  lax  and 
disorganized,  losing  our  grip  upon  the  real  and 
vital  sources  of  happiness  and  power.  Now,  there 
is  no  preservative  and  antiseptic,  nothing  that  keeps 
one's  heart  young,  like  love,  like  sympathy,  like 
giving  one's  self  with  enthusiasm  to  some  worthy 
thing  or  cause. 

If  I  were  to  name  the  three  most  precious  re- 
sources of  life,  I  should  say  books,  friends,  and 
nature;  and  the  greatest  of  these,  at  least  the  most 
constant  and  always  at  hand,  is  nature.  Nature 
we  have  always  with  us,  an  inexhaustible  store- 
house of  that  which  moves  the  heart,  appeals  to  the 
mind,  and  fires  the  imagination,  —  health  to  the 
body,  a  stimulus  to  the  intellect,  and  joy  to  the  soul. 
To  the  scientist  Nature  is  a  storehouse  of  facts, 
laws,  processes;  to  the  artist  she  is  a  storehouse  of 
3 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

pictures;  to  the  poet  she  is  a  storehouse  of  images, 
fancies,  a  source  of  inspiration;  to  the  moralist  she 
is  a  storehouse  of  precepts  and  parables;  to  all  she 
may  be  a  source  of  knowledge  and  joy. 

ii 

There  is  nothing  in  which  people  differ  more 
than  in  their  powers  of  observation.  Some  are 
only  half  alive  to  what  is  going  on  around  them. 
Others,  again,  are  keenly  alive:  their  intelligence, 
their  powers  of  recognition,  are  in  full  force  in 
eye  and  ear  at  all  times.  They  see  and  hear  every- 
thing, whether  it  directly  concerns  them  or  not. 
They  never  pass  unseen  a  familiar  face  on  the 
street;  they  are  never  oblivious  of  any  interesting 
feature  or  sound  or  object  in  the  earth  or  sky  about 
them.  Their  power  of  attention  is  always  on 
the  alert,  not  by  conscious  effort,  but  by  natural 
habit  and  disposition.  Their  perceptive  faculties 
may  be  said  to  be  always  on  duty.  They  turn  to 
the  outward  world  a  more  highly  sensitized  mind 
than  other  people.  The  things  that  pass  before 
them  are  caught  and  individualized  instantly.  If 
they  visit  new  countries,  they  see  the  characteristic 
features  of  the  people  and  scenery  at  once.  The 
impression  is  never  blurred  or  confused.  Their 
powers  of  observation  suggest  the  sight  and  scent 
of  wild  animals;  only,  whereas  it  is  fear  that  sharp- 
ens the  one,  it  is  love  and  curiosity  that  sharpens 
4 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

the  other.  The  mother  turkey  with  her  brood  sees 
the  hawk  when  it  is  a  mere  speck  against  the  sky; 
she  is,  in  her  solicitude  for  her  young,  thinking  of 
hawks,  and  is  on  her  guard  against  them.  Fear 
makes  keen  her  eye.  The  hunter  does  not  see  the 
hawk  till  his  attention  is  thus  called  to  it  by  the 
turkey,  because  his  interests  are  not  endangered; 
but  he  outsees  the  wild  creatures  of  the  plain  and 
mountain,  —  the  elk,  the  antelope,  and  the  moun- 
tain-sheep, —  he  makes  it  his  business  to  look  for 
them,  and  his  eyes  carry  farther  than  do  theirs. 

We  may  see  coarsely  and  vaguely,  as  most 
people  do,  noting  only  masses  and  unusual  ap- 
pearances, or  we  may  see  finely  and  discriminat- 
ingly, taking  in  the  minute  and  the  specific.  In 
a  collection  of  stuffed  birds,  the  other  day,  I  ob- 
served that  a  wood  thrush  was  mounted  as  in  the 
act  of  song,  its  open  beak  pointing  straight  to  the 
zenith.  The  taxidermist  had  not  seen  truly.  The 
thrush  sings  with  its  beak  but  slightly  elevated. 
Who  has  not  seen  a  red  squirrel  or  a  gray  squirrel 
running  up  and  down  the  trunk  of  a  tree?  But 
probably  very  few  have  noticed  that  the  position  of 
the  hind  feet  is  the  reverse  in  the  one  case  from 
what  it  is  in  the  other.  In  descending  they  are 
extended  to  the  rear,  the  toe-nails  hooking  to  the 
bark,  checking  and  controlling  the  fall.  In  most 
pictures  the  feet  are  shown  well  drawn  up  under 
the  body  in  both  cases. 

5 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

People  who  discourse  pleasantly  and  accurately 
about  the  birds  and  flowers  and  external  nature 
generally  are  not  invariably  good  observers.  In  their 
walks  do  they  see  anything  they  did  not  come  out 
to  see?  Is  there  any  spontaneous  or  unpremedi- 
tated seeing?  Do  they  make  discoveries?  Any 
bird  or  creature  may  be  hunted  down,  any  nest 
discovered,  if  you  lay  siege  to  it;  but  to  find  what 
you  are  not  looking  for,  to  catch  the  shy  winks  and 
gestures  on  every  side,  to  see  all  the  by-play  going 
on  around  you,  missing  no  significant  note  or 
movement,  penetrating  every  screen  with  your 
eye-beams  —  that  is  to  be  an  observer ;  that  is  to 
have  "an  eye  practiced  like  a  blind  man's  touch," 
—  a  touch  that  can  distinguish  a  white  horse  from 
a  black,  —  a  detective  eye  that  reads  the  faintest 
signs.  When  Thoreau  was  at  Cape  Cod,  he  noticed 
that  the  horses  there  had  a  certain  muscle  in  their 
hips  inordinately  developed  by  reason  of  the  in- 
secure footing  in  the  ever-yielding  sand.  Thoreau's 
vision  at  times  fitted  things  closely.  During  some 
great  fete  in  Paris,  the  Empress  Eugenie  and 
Queen  Victoria  were  both  present.  A  reporter 
noticed  that  when  the  royal  personages  came  to  sit 
down,  Eugenie  looked  behind  her  before  doing  so, 
to  see  that  the  chair  was  really  there,  but  Victoria 
seated  herself  without  the  backward  glance,  know- 
ing there  must  be  a  seat  ready:  there  always  had 
been,  and  there  always  would  be,  for  her.  The 
6 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

correspondent  inferred  that  the  incident  showed 
the  difference  between  born  royalty  and  hastily 
made  royalty.  I  wonder  how  many  persons  in 
that  vast  assembly  made  this  observation;  proba- 
bly very  few.  It  denoted  a  gift  for  seeing  things. 

If  our  powers  of  observation  were  quick  and  sure 
enough,  no  doubt  we  should  see  through  most  of 
the  tricks  of  the  sleight-of-hand  man.  He  fools  us 
because  his  hand  is  more  dexterous  than  our  eye. 
He  captures  our  attention,  and  then  commands 
us  to  see  only  what  he  wishes  us  to  see. 

In  the  field  of  natural  history,  things  escape  us 
because  the  actors  are  small,  and  the  stage  is  very 
large  and  more  or  less  veiled  and  obstructed.  The 
movement  is  quick  across  a  background  that  tends 
to  conceal  rather  than  expose  it.  In  the  printed 
page  the  white  paper  plays  quite  as  important  a 
part  as  the  type  and  the  ink;  but  the  book  of  nature 
is  on  a  different  plan:  the  page  rarely  presents  a 
contrast  of  black  and  white,  or  even  black  and 
brown,  but  only  of  similar  tints,  gray  upon  gray, 
green  upon  green,  or  drab  upon  brown. 

By  a  close  observer  I  do  not  mean  a  minute, 
cold-blooded  specialist,  — 

"  a  fingering  slave, 
One  who  would  peep  and  botanize 
Upon  his  mother's  grave,"  — 

but  a  man  who  looks  closely  and  steadily  at  nature, 
and  notes  the  individual  features  of  tree  and  rock 

7 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

and  field,  and  allows  no  subtile  flavor  of  the  night 
or  day,  of  the  place  and  the  season,  to  escape  him. 
His  senses  are  so  delicate  that  in  his  evening  walk 
he  feels  the  warm  and  the  cool  streaks  in  the  air,  his 
nose  detects  the  most  fugitive  odors,  his  ears  the 
most  furtive  sounds.  As  he  stands  musing  in  the 
April  twilight,  he  hears  that  fine,  elusive  stir  and 
rustle  made  by  the  angleworms  reaching  out  from 
their  holes  for  leaves  and  grasses;  he  hears  the 
whistling  wings  of  the  woodcock  as  it  goes  swiftly 
by  him  in  the  dusk;  he  hears  the  call  of  the  kill- 
dee  come  down  out  of  the  March  sky;  he  hears 
far  above  him  in  the  early  morning  the  squeaking 
cackle  of  the  arriving  blackbirds  pushing  north; 
he  hears  the  soft,  prolonged,  lulling  call  of  the  little 
owl  in  the  cedars  in  the  early  spring  twilight;  he 
hears  at  night  the  roar  of  the  distant  waterfall,  and 
the  rumble  of  the  train  miles  across  the  country 
when  the  air  is  "  hollow ; "  before  a  storm  he  notes 
how  distant  objects  stand  out  and  are  brought 
near  on  those  brilliant  days  that  we  call  "  weather- 
breeders."  When  the  mercury  is  at  zero  or  lower, 
he  notes  how  the  passing  trains  hiss  and  simmer 
as  if  the  rails  or  wheels  were  red-hot.  He  reads  the 
subtile  signs  of  the  weather.  The  stars  at  night 
forecast  the  coming  day  to  him;  the  clouds  at 
evening  and  at  morning  are  a  sign.  He  knows  there 
is  the  wet-weather  diathesis  and  the  dry-weather 
diathesis,  or,  as  Goethe  said,  water  affirmative 
8 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

and  water  negative,  and  he  interprets  the  symptoms 
accordingly.  He  is  keenly  alive  to  all  outward 
impressions.  When  he  descends  from  the  hill  in 
the  autumn  twilight,  he  notes  the  cooler  air  of  the 
valley  like  a  lake  about  him;  he  notes  how,  at  other 
seasons,  the  cooler  air  at  times  settles  down  between 
the  mountains  like  a  vast  body  of  water,  as  shown  by 
the  level  line  of  the  fog  or  the  frost  upon  the  trees. 

The  modern  man  looks  at  nature  with  an  eye  of 
sympathy  and  love  where  the  earlier  man  looked 
with  an  eye  of  fear  and  superstition.  Hence  he 
sees  more  closely  and  accurately;  science  has  made 
his  eye  steady  and  clear.  To  a  hasty  traveler 
through  the  land,  the  farms  and  country  homes  all 
seem  much  alike,  but  to  the  people  born  and  reared 
there,  what  a  difference!  They  have  read  the  fine 
print  that  escapes  the  hurried  eye  and  that  is  so 
full  of  meaning.  Every  horizon  line,  every  curve 
in  hill  or  valley,  every  tree  and  rock  and  spring 
run,  every  turn  in  the  road  and  vista  in  the  land- 
scape, has  its  special  features  and  makes  its  own 
impression. 

Scott  wrote  in  his  journal :  "  Nothing  is  so  tire- 
some as  walking  through  some  beautiful  scene 
with  a  minute  philosopher,  a  botanist,  or  a  pebble- 
gatherer,  who  is  eternally  calling  your  attention 
from  the  grand  features  of  the  natural  picture  to 
look  at  grasses  and  chuckie-stanes."  No  doubt 
Scott's  large,  generous  way  of  looking  at  things 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

kindles  the  imagination  and  touches  the  sentiments 
more  than  does  this  minute  way  of  the  specialist. 
The  nature  that  Scott  gives  us  is  like  the  air  and 
the  water  that  all  may  absorb,  while  what  the 
specialist  gives  us  is  more  like  some  particular  ele- 
ment or  substance  that  only  the  few  can  appropriate. 
But  Scott  had  his  specialties,  too,  the  specialties 
of  the  sportsman ;  he  was  the  first  to  see  the  hare's 
eyes  as  she  sat  in  her  form,  and  he  knew  the  ways 
of  grouse  and  pheasants  and  trout.  The  ideal  ob- 
server turns  the  enthusiasm  of  the  sportsman  into 
the  channels  of  natural  history,  and  brings  home 
a  finer  game  than  ever  fell  to  shot  or  bullet.  He  too 
has  an  eye  for  the  fox  and  the  rabbit  and  the  migrat- 
ing water-fowl,  but  he  sees  them  with  loving  and 
not  with  murderous  eyes. 

in 

So  far  as  seeing  things  is  an  art,  it  is  the  art  of 
keeping  your  eyes  and  ears  open.  The  art  of  nature 
is  all  in  the  direction  of  concealment.  The  birds, 
the  animals,  all  the  wild  creatures,  for  the  most 
part  try  to  elude  your  observation.  The  art  of  the 
bird  is  to  hide  her  nest;  the  art  of  the  game  you  are 
in  quest  of  is  to  make  itself  invisible.  The  flower 
seeks  to  attract  the  bee  and  the  moth  by  its  color 
and  perfume,  because  they  are  of  service  to  it;  but 
I  presume  it  would  hide  from  the  excursionists  and 
the  picnickers  if  it  could,  because  they  extirpate  it. 
10 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

Power  of  attention  and  a  mind  sensitive  to  outward 
objects,  in  these  lies  the  secret  of  seeing  things. 
Can  you  bring  all  your  faculties  to  the  front,  like  a 
house  with  many  faces  at  the  doors  and  windows; 
or  do  you  live  retired  within  yourself,  shut  up  in 
your  own  meditations  ?  The  thinker  puts  all  the 
powers  of  his  mind  in  reflection :  the  observer  puts 
all  the  powers  of  his  mind  in  perception;  every 
faculty  is  directed  outward;  the  whole  mind  sees 
through  the  eye  and  hears  through  the  ear.  He 
has  an  objective  turn  of  mind  as  opposed  to  a  sub- 
jective. A  person  with  the  latter  turn  of  mind  sees 
little.  If  you  are  occupied  with  your  own  thoughts, 
you  may  go  through  a  museum  of  curiosities  and 
observe  nothing. 

Of  course  one's  powers  of  observation  may  be 
cultivated  as  well  as  anything  else.  The  senses  of 
seeing  and  hearing  may  be  quickened  and  trained 
as  well  as  the  sense  of  touch.  Blind  persons  come 
to  be  marvelously  acute  in  their  powers  of  touch. 
Their  feet  find  the  path  and  keep  it.  They  come  to 
know  the  lay  of  the  land  through  this  sense,  and 
recognize  the  roads  and  surfaces  they  have  once 
traveled  over.  Helen  Keller  reads  your  speech  by 
putting  her  hand  upon  your  lips,  and  is  thrilled  by 
the  music  of  an  instrument  through  the  same  sense 
of  touch.  The  perceptions  of  school-children  should 
be  trained  as  well  as  their  powers  of  reflection  and 
memory.  A  teacher  in  Connecticut,  Miss  Aiken,  — 
11 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

whose  work  on  mind-training  I  commend  to  all 
teachers,  —  has  hit  upon  a  simple  and  ingenious 
method  of  doing  this.  She  has  a  revolving  black- 
board upon  which  she  writes  various  figures,  num- 
bers, words,  sentences,  which  she  exposes  to  the 
view  of  the  class  for  one  or  two  or  three  seconds, 
as  the  case  may  be,  and  then  asks  them  to  copy  or 
repeat  what  was  written.  In  time  they  become 
astonishingly  quick,  especially  the  girls,  and  can 
take  in  a  multitude  of  things  at  a  glance.  Detec- 
tives, I  am  told,  are  trained  after  a  similar  method; 
a  man  is  led  quickly  by  a  show-window,  for  in- 
stance, and  asked  to  name  and  describe  the  objects 
he  saw  there.  Life  itself  is  of  course  more  or  less 
a  school  of  this  kind,  but  the  power  of  concentrated 
attention  in  most  persons  needs  stimulating.  Here 
comes  in  the  benefit  of  manual-training  schools. 
To  do  a  thing,  to  make  something,  the  powers  of 
the  mind  must  be  focused.  A  boy  in  building  a 
boat  will  get  something  that  all  the  books  in  the 
world  cannot  give  him.  The  concrete,  the  definite, 
the  discipline  of  real  things,  the  educational  values 
that  lie  here,  are  not  enough  appreciated. 

IV 

The  book  of  nature  is  like  a  page  written  over  or 
printed  upon  with  different-sized  characters  and  in 
many  different  languages,  interlined  and  cross- 
lined,  and  with  a  great  variety  of  marginal  notes 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

and  references.  There  is  coarse  print  and  fine 
print;  there  are  obscure  signs  and  hieroglyphics. 
We  all  read  the  large  type  more  or  less  apprecia- 
tively, but  only  the  students  and  lovers  of  nature 
read  the  fine  lines  and  the  footnotes.  It  is  a  book 
which  he  reads  best  who  goes  most  slowly  or  even 
tarries  long  by  the  way.  He  who  runs  may  read 
some  things.  We  may  take  in  the  general  features 
of  sky,  plain,  and  river  from  the  express  train,  but 
only  the  pedestrian,  the  saunterer,  with  eyes  in  his 
head  and  love  in  his  heart,  turns  every  leaf  and 
peruses  every  line.  One  man  sees  only  the  migrat- 
ing water-fowls  and  the  larger  birds  of  the  air; 
another  sees  the  passing  kinglets  and  hurrying 
warblers  as  well.  For  my  part,  my  delight  is  to 
linger  long  over  each  page  of  this  marvelous  record, 
and  to  dwell  fondly  upon  its  most  obscure  text. 

I  take  pleasure  in  noting  the  minute  things  about 
me.  I  am  interested  even  in  the  ways  of  the  wild 
bees,  and  in  all  the  little  dramas  and  tragedies  that 
occur  in  field  and  wood.  One  June  day,  in  my 
walk,  as  I  crossed  a  rather  dry,  high-lying  field, 
my  attention  was  attracted  by  small  mounds  of 
fresh  earth  all  over  the  ground,  scarcely  more  than 
a  handful  in  each.  On  looking  closely,  I  saw  that 
in  the  middle  of  each  mound  there  was  a  hole  not 
quite  so  large  as  a  lead-pencil.  Now,  I  had  never 
observed  these  mounds  before,  and  my  curiosity 
was  aroused.  "Here  is  some  fine  print,"  I  said, 
13 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

"that  I  have  overlooked."  So  I  set  to  work  to  try 
to  read  it;  I  waited  for  a  sign  of  life.  Presently  I 
saw  here  and  there  a  bee  hovering  about  over  the 
mounds.  It  looked  like  the  honey-bee,  only  less 
pronounced  in  color  and  manner.  One  of  them 
alighted  on  one  of  the  mounds  near  me,  and  was 
about  to  disappear  in  the  hole  in  the  centre  when  I 
caught  it  in  my  hand.  Though  it  stung  me,  I  re- 
tained it  and  looked  it  over,  and  in  the  process  was 
stung  several  times;  but  the  pain  was  slight.  I  saw 
it  was  one  of  our  native  wild  bees,  cousin  to  the 
leaf-rollers,  that  build  their  nests  under  stones  and 
in  decayed  fence-rails.  (In  Packard  I  found  it 
described  under  the  name  of  Andrena.)  Then  I 
inserted  a  small  weed-stalk  into  one  of  the  holes, 
and,  with  a  little  trowel  I  carried,  proceeded  to 
dig  out  the  nest.  The  hole  was  about  a  foot  deep; 
at  the  bottom  of  it  I  found  a  little  semi-transparent, 
membranous  sac  or  cell,  a  little  larger  than  that  of 
the  honey-bee;  in  this  sac  was  a  little  pellet  of  yel- 
low pollen  —  a  loaf  of  bread  for  the  young  grub 
when  the  egg  should  have  hatched.  I  explored  other 
nests  and  found  them  all  the  same.  This  discovery 
was  not  a  great  addition  to  my  sum  of  natural 
knowledge,  but  it  was  something.  Now  when  I  see 
the  signs  in  a  field,  I  know  what  they  mean:  they 
indicate  the  tiny  earthen  cradles  of  Andrena. 

Near  by  I  chanced  to  spy  a  large  hole  in  the  turf, 
with  no  mound  of  soil  about  it.   I  could  put  the  end 
14 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

of  my  little  finger  into  it.  I  peered  down,  and  saw 
the  gleam  of  two  small,  bead-like  eyes.  I  knew  it  to 
be  the  den  of  the  wolf-spider.  Was  she  waiting  for 
some  blundering  insect  to  tumble  in?  I  say  she, 
because  the  real  ogre  among  the  spiders  is  the  fe- 
male. The  male  is  small  and  of  little  consequence. 
A  few  days  later  I  paused  by  this  den  again  and 
saw  the  members  of  the  ogress  scattered  about  her 
own  door.  Had  some  insect  Jack  the  Giant-Killer 
been  there,  or  had--a  still  more  formidable  ogress, 
the  sand-hornet,  dragged  her  forth  and  carried 
away  her  limbless  body  to  her  den  in  the  bank  ? 

What  the  wolf-spider  does  with  the  earth  it  exca- 
vates in  making  its  den  is  a  mystery.  There  is  no 
sign  of  it  anywhere  about.  Does  it  force  its  way 
down  by  pushing  the  soil  to  one  side  and  packing 
it  there  firmly?  The  entrance  to  the  hole  usually 
has  a  slight  rim  or  hem  to  keep  the  edge  from 
crumbling  in. 

As  it  happened,  I  chanced  upon  another  inter- 
esting footnote  that  very  day.  I  was  on  my  way  to 
a  muck  swamp  in  the  woods,  to  see  if  the  showy 
lady's-slipper  was  in  bloom.  Just  on  the  margin  of 
the  swamp,  in  the  deep  shade  of  the  hemlocks,  my 
eye  took  note  of  some  small,  unshapely  creature 
crawling  hurriedly  over  the  ground.  I  stooped 
down,  and  saw  it  was  some  large  species  of  moth 
just  out  of  its  case,  and  in  a  great  hurry  to  find  a 
suitable  place  in  which  to  hang  itself  up  and  give 
15 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

its  wings  a  chance  to  unfold  before  the  air  dried 
them.  I  thrust  a  small  twig  in  its  way,  which  it 
instantly  seized  upon.  I  lifted  it  gently,  carried  it 
to  drier  ground,  and  fixed  the  stick  in  the  fork  of  a 
tree,  so  that  the  moth  hung  free  a  few  feet  from  the 
ground.  Its  body  was  distended  nearly  to  the  size 
of  one's  little  finger,  and  surmounted  by  wings  that 
were  so  crumpled  and  stubby  that  they  seemed 
quite  rudimentary.  The  creature  evidently  knew 
what  it  wanted,  and  knew  the  importance  of  haste. 
Instantly  these  rude,  stubby  wings  began  to  grow. 
It  was  a  slow  process,  but  one  could  see  the  change 
from  minute  to  minute.  As  the  wings  expanded, 
the  body  contracted.  By  some  kind  of  pumping 
arrangement  air  was  being  forced  from  a  reservoir 
in  the  one  into  the  tubes  of  the  other.  The  wings 
were  not  really  growing,  as  they  at  first  seemed  to 
be,  but  they  were  unfolding  and  expanding  under 
this  pneumatic  pressure  from  the  body.  In  the 
course  of  about  half  an  hour  the  process  was  com- 
pleted, and  the  winged  creature  hung  there  in  all 
its  full-fledged  beauty.  Its  color  was  checked  black 
and  white  like  a  loon's  back,  but  its  name  I  know 
not.  My  chief  interest  in  it,  aside  from  the  interest 
we  feel  in  any  new  form  of  life,  arose  from  the  crea- 
ture's extreme  anxiety  to  reach  a  perch  where  it 
could  unfold  its  wings.  A  little  delay  would  doubt- 
less have  been  fatal  to  it.  I  wonder  how  many  hu- 
man geniuses  are  hatched  whose  wings  are  blighted 
16 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING  THINGS 

by  some  accident  or  untoward  circumstance.  Or 
do  the  wings  of  genius  always  unfold,  no  matter 
what  the  environment  may  be? 

One  seldom  takes  a  walk  without  encountering 
some  of  this  fine  print  on  nature's  page.  Now  it  is  a 
little  yellowish-white  moth  that  spreads  itself  upon 
the  middle  of  a  leaf  as  if  to  imitate  the  droppings  of 
birds ;  or  it  is  the  young  cicadas  working  up  out  of 
the  ground,  and  in  the  damp,  cool  places  building 
little  chimneys  or  tubes  above  the  surface  to  get 
more  warmth  and  hasten  their  development ;  or  it  is 
a  wood-newt  gorging  a  tree-cricket,  or  a  small  snake 
gorging  the  newt,  or  a  bird  song  with  some  striking 
peculiarity  —  a  strange  defect,  or  a  rare  excellence. 
Now  it  is  a  shrike  impaling  his  victim,  or  blue 
jays  mocking  and  teasing  a  hawk  and  dropping 
quickly  into  the  branches  to  avoid  his  angry  blows, 
or  a  robin  hustling  a  cuckoo  out  of  the  tree  where 
her  nest  is,  or  a  vireo  driving  away  a  cowbird,  or 
the  partridge  blustering  about  your  feet  till  her 
young  are  hidden.  One  October  morning  I  was 
walking  along  the  road  on  the  edge  of  the  woods, 
when  I  came  into  a  gentle  shower  of  butternuts; 
one  of  them  struck  my  hat-brim.  I  paused  and 
looked  about  me;  here  one  fell,  there  another, 
yonder  a  third.  There  was  no  wind  blowing,  and 
I  wondered  what  was  loosening  the  butternuts. 
Turning  my  attention  to  the  top  of  the  tree,  I  soon 
saw  the  explanation:  a  red  squirrel  was  at  work 
17 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

gathering  his  harvest.  He  would  seize  a  nut,  give 
it  a  twist,  when  down  it  would  come;  then  he 
would  dart  to  another  and  another.  Farther  along 
I  found  where  he  had  covered  the  ground  with 
chestnut  burs;  he  could  not  wait  for  the  frost  and  the 
winds;  did  he  know  that  the  burs  would  dry  and 
open  upon  the  ground,  and  that  the  bitter  covering 
of  the  butternuts  would  soon  fall  away  from  the  nut  ? 
There  are  three  things  that  perhaps  happen 
near  me  each  season  that  I  have  never  yet  seen  — 
the  toad  casting  its  skin,  the  snake  swallowing  its 
young,  and  the  larvae  of  the  moth  and  butterfly 
constructing  their  shrouds.  It  is  a  mooted  question 
whether  or  not  the  snake  does  swallow  its  young, 
but  if  there  is  no  other  good  reason  for  it,  may  they 
not  retreat  into  their  mother's  stomach  to  feed  ? 
How  else  are  they  to  be  nourished  ?  That  the  moth 
larva  can  weave  its  own  cocoon  and  attach  it  to  a 
twig  seems  more  incredible.  Yesterday,  in  my  walk, 
I  found  a  firm,  silver-gray  cocoon,  about  two  inches 
long  and  shaped  like  an  Egyptian  mummy  (prob- 
ably Promethea),  suspended  from  a  branch  of  a  bush 
by  a  narrow,  stout  ribbon  twice  as  long  as  itself. 
The  fastening  was  woven  around  the  limb,  upon 
which  it  turned  as  if  it  grew  there.  I  would  have 
given  something  to  have  seen  the  creature  perform 
this  feat,  and  then  incase  itself  so  snugly  in  the 
silken  shroud  at  the  end  of  this  tether.  By  swinging 
free,  its  firm,  compact  case  was  in  no  danger  from 
18 


THE   ART  OF   SEEING  THINGS 

woodpeckers,  as  it  might  have  been  if  resting 
directly  upon  a  branch  or  tree-trunk.  Near  by  was 
the  cocoon  of  another  species  (Cecropia)  that  was 
fastened  directly  to  the  limb;  but  this  was  vague, 
loose,  and  much  more  involved  and  net-like.  I 
have  seen  the  downy  woodpecker  assaulting  one  of 
these  cocoons,  but  its  yielding  surface  and  webby 
interior  seemed  to  puzzle  and  baffle  him. 

I  am  interested  even  in  the  way  each  climbing 
plant  or  vine  goes  up  the  pole,  whether  from  right 
to  left,  or  from  left  to  right,  —  that  is,  with  the 
hands  of  a  clock  or  against  them,  —  whether  it  is 
under  the  law  of  the  great  cyclonic  storms  of  the 
northern  hemisphere,  which  all  move  against  the 
hands  of  a  clock,  or  in  the  contrary  direction,  like 
the  cyclones  in  the  southern  hemisphere.  I  take 
pleasure  in  noting  every  little  dancing  whirlwind 
of  a  summer  day  that  catches  up  the  dust  or  the 
leaves  before  me,  and  every  little  funnel-shaped 
whirlpool  in  the  swollen  stream  or  river,  whether 
or  not  they  spin  from  right  to  left  or  the  reverse. 
If  I  were  in  the  southern  hemisphere,  I  am  sure 
I  should  note  whether  these  things  were  under  the 
law  of  its  cyclones  in  this  respect  or  under  the 
law  of  ours.  As  a  rule,  our  twining  plants  and 
toy  whirlwinds  copy  our  revolving  storms  and  go 
against  the  hands  of  the  clock.  But  there  are  ex- 
ceptions. While  the  bean,  the  bittersweet,  the  morn- 
ing-glory, and  others  go  up  from  left  to  right,  the 
19 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

hop,  the  wild  buckwheat,  and  some  others  go  up 
from  right  to  left.  Most  of  our  forest  trees  show  a 
tendency  to  wind  one  way  or  the  other,  the  hard 
woods  going  in  one  direction,  and  the  hemlocks  and 
pines  and  cedars  and  butternuts  and  chestnuts  in 
another.  In  different  localities,  or  on  different 
geological  formations,  I  find  these  directions  re- 
versed. I  recall  one  instance  in  the  case  of  a  hem- 
lock six  or  seven  inches  in  diameter,  where  this 
tendency  to  twist  had  -come  out  of  the  grain,  as  it 
were,  and  shaped  the  outward  form  of  the  tree, 
causing  it  to  make,  in  an  ascent  of  about  thirty  feet, 
one  complete  revolution  about  a  larger  tree  close  to 
which  it  grew.  On  a  smaller  scale  I  have  seen  the 
same  thing  in  a  pine. 

Persons  lost  in  the  woods  or  on  the  plains,  or 
traveling  at  night,  tend,  I  believe,  toward  the  left. 
The  movements  of  men  and  women,  it  is  said,  differ 
in  this  respect,  one  se;x  turning  to  the  right  and  the 
other  to  the  left. 

I  had  lived  in  the  world  more  than  fifty  years 
before  I  noticed  a  peculiarity  about  the  rays  of  light 
one  often  sees  diverging  from  an  opening,  or  a  series 
of  openings,  in  the  clouds,  namely,  that  they  are 
like  spokes  in  a  wheel,  the  hub,  or  centre,  of  which 
appears  to  be  just  there  in  the  vapory  masses,  instead 
of  being,  as  is  really  the  case,  nearly  ninety-three 
millions  of  miles  beyond.  The  beams  of  light  that 
come  through  cracks  or  chinks  in  a  wall  do  not 
20 


THE   ART   OF  SEEING  THINGS 

converge  in  this  way,  but  to  the  eye  run  parallel  to 
one  another.  There  is  another  fact :  this  fan-shaped 
display  of  converging  rays  is  always  immediately 
in  front  of  the  observer;  that  is,  exactly  between 
him  and  the  sun,  so  that  the  central  spoke  or  shaft 
in  his  front  is  always  perpendicular.  You  cannot 
see  this  fan  to  the  right  or  left  of  the  sun,  but  only 
between  you  and  it.  Hence,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
rainbow,  no  two  persons  see  exactly  the  same 
rays. 

The  eye  sees  what  it  has  the  means  of  seeing, 
and  its  means  of  seeing  are  in  proportion  to  the  love 
and  desire  behind  it.  The  eye  is  informed  and 
sharpened  by  the  thought.  My  boy  sees  ducks  on 
the  river  where  and  when  I  cannot,  because  at  cer- 
tain seasons  he  thinks  ducks  and  dreams  ducks. 
One  season  my  neighbor  asked  me  if  the  bees  had 
injured  my  grapes.  I  said,  "No;  the  bees  never 
injure  my  grapes." 

"  They  do  mine,"  he  replied ;  "  they  puncture  the 
skin  for  the  juice,  and  at  times  the  clusters  are 
covered  with  them." 

"No,"  I  said,  "it  is  not  the  bees  that  puncture 
the  skin;  it  is  the  birds." 

"What  birds?" 

"The  orioles." 

"But  I  have  n't  seen  any  orioles,"  he  rejoined. 

"  We  have,"  I  continued,  "  because  at  this  season 
we  think  orioles;  we  have  learned  by  experience 
21 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

how  destructive  these  birds  are  in  the  vineyard, 
and  we  are  on  the  lookout  for  them;  our  eyes 
and  ears  are  ready  for  them." 

If  we  think  birds,  we  shall  see  birds  wherever  we 
go;  if  we  think  arrowheads,  as  Thoreau  did,  we 
shall  pick  up  arrowheads  in  every  field.  Some 
people  have  an  eye  for  four-leaved  clovers;  they 
see  them  as  they  walk  hastily  over  the  turf,  for  they 
already  have  them  in  their  eyes.  I  once  took  a 
walk  with  the  late  Professor  Eaton  of  Yale.  He 
was  just  then  specially  interested  in  the  mosses, 
and  he  found  them,  all  kinds,  everywhere.  I  can 
see  him  yet,  every  few  minutes  upon  his  knees, 
adjusting  his  eye-glasses  before  some  rare  specimen. 
The  beauty  he  found  in  them,  arid  pointed  out  to 
me,  kindled  my  enthusiasm  also.  I  once  spent  a 
summer  day  at  the  mountain  home  of  a  well-known 
literary  woman  and  editor.  She  lamented  the  ab- 
sence of  birds  about  her  house.  I  named  a  half- 
dozen  or  more  I  had  heard  or  seen  in  her  trees 
within  an  hour  —  the  indigo-bird,  the  purple 
finch,  the  yellowbird,  the  veery  thrush,  the  red- 
eyed  vireo,  the  song  sparrow. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  you  have  seen  or  heard 
all  these  birds  while  sitting  here  on  my  porch  ? " 
she  inquired. 

"I  really  have,"  I  said. 

"I  do  not  see  them  or  hear  them,"  she  replied, 
"and  yet  I  want  to  very  much." 


THE  ART  OF   SEEING   THINGS 

" No,"  said  I;  "you  only  want  to  want  to  see  and 
hear  them." 

You  must  have  the  bird  in  your  heart  before 
you  can  find  it  in  the  bush. 

I  was  sitting  in  front  of  a  farmhouse  one  day 
in  company  with  the  local  Nimrod.  In  a  maple  tree 
in  front  of  us  I  saw  the  great  crested  flycatcher.  I 
called  the  hunter's  attention  to  it,  and  asked  him 
if  he  had  ever  seen  that  bird  before.  No,  he  had 
not;  it  was  a  new  bird  to  him.  But  he  probably 
had  seen  it  scores  of  times,  —  seen  it  without  re- 
garding it.  It  was  not  the  game  he  was  in  quest  of, 
and  his  eye  heeded  it  not. 

Human  and  artificial  sounds  and  objects  thrust 
themselves  upon  us;  they  are  within  our  sphere,  so 
to  speak:  but  the  life  of  nature  we  must  meet  half- 
way; it  is  shy,  withdrawn,  and  blends  itself  with 
a  vast  neutral  background.  We  must  be  initiated; 
it  is  an  order  the  secrets  of  which  are  well  guarded. 


II 

THE   COMING   OF  SUMMER 

WHO  shall  say  when  one  season  ends  and 
another  begins?  Only  the  almanac- makers 
can  fix  these  dates.  It  is  like  saying  when  babyhood 
ends  and  childhood  begins,  or  when  childhood  ends 
and  youth  begins.  To  me  spring  begins  when  the 
catkins  on  the  alders  and  the  pussy-willows  begin 
to  swell ;  when  the  ice  breaks  up  on  the  river  and  the 
first  sea-gulls  come  prospecting  northward.  What- 
ever the  date — the  first  or  the  middle  or  the  last  of 
March  —  when  these  signs  appear,  then  I  know 
spring  is  at  hand.  Her  first  birds  —  the  bluebird, 
the  song  sparrow,  the  robin,  the  red-shouldered 
starling  —  are  here  or  soon  will  be.  The  crows 
have  a  more  confident  caw,  the  sap  begins  to  start 
in  the  sugar  maple,  the  tiny  boom  of  the  first  bee 
is  heard,  the  downy  woodpecker  begins  his  resonant 
tat,  tat,  tat,  on  the  dry  limbs,  and  the  cattle  in  the 
barnyard  low  long  and  loud  with  wistful  looks 
toward  the  fields. 

The  first  hint  of  summer  comes  when  the  trees 
are  fully  fledged  and  the  nymph  Shadow  is  born. 
See  her  cool  circles  again  beneath  the  trees  in  the 
25 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

field,  or  her  deeper  and  cooler  retreats  in  the  woods. 
On  the  slopes,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river, 
there  have  been  for  months  under  the  morning  and 
noon  sun  only  slight  shadow  tracings,  a  fretwork  of 
shadow  lines;  but  some  morning  in  May  I  look 
across  and  see  solid  masses  of  shade  falling  from  the 
trees  athwart  the  sloping  turf.  How  the  eye  revels 
in  them!  The  trees  are  again  clothed  and  in  their 
right  minds;  myriad  leaves  rustle  in  promise  of 
the  coming  festival.  Now  the  trees  are  sentient 
beings;  they  have  thoughts  and  fancies;  they  stir 
with  emotion;  they  converse  together;  they  whisper 
or  dream  in  the  twilight;  they  struggle  and  wrestle 
with  the  storm. 

"  Caught  and  curved  by  the  gale," 

Tennyson  says. 

Summer  always  comes  in  the  person  of  June, 
with  a  bunch  of  daisies  on  her  breast  and  clover 
blossoms  in  her  hands.  A  new  chapter  in  the  season 
is  opened  when  these  flowers  appear.  One  says  to 
himself,  "  Well,  I  have  lived  to  see  the  daisies  again 
and  to  smell  the  red  clover."  One  plucks  the  first 
blossoms  tenderly  and  caressingly.  What  memories 
are  stirred  in  the  mind  by  the  fragrance  of  the  one 
and  the  youthful  face  of  the  other!  There  is  nothing 
else  like  that  smell  of  the  clover:  it  is  the  maidenly 
breath  of  summer;  it  suggests  all  fresh,  buxom, 
rural  things.  A  field  of  ruddy,  blooming  clover, 
26 


THE  COMING  OF  SUMMER 

dashed  or  sprinkled  here  and  there  with  the  snow- 
white  of  the  daisies;  its  breath  drifts  into  the  road 
when  you  are  passing;  you  hear  the  boom  of  bees, 
the  voice  of  bobolinks,  the  twitter  of  swallows,  the 
whistle  of  woodchucks ;  you  smell  wild  strawberries ; 
you  see  the  cattle  upon  the  hills ;  you  see  your  youth, 
the  youth  of  a  happy  farm-boy,  rise  before  you.  In 
Kentucky  I  once  saw  two  fields,  of  one  hundred 
acres  each,  all  ruddy  with  blooming  clover  —  per- 
fume for  a  whole  county. 

The  blooming  orchards  are  the  glory  of  May, 
the  blooming  clover-fields  the  distinction  of  June. 
Other  characteristic  June  perfumes  come  from  the 
honey-locusts  and  the  blooming  grapevines.  At 
times  and  in  certain  localities  the  air  at  night  and 
morning  is  heavy  with  the  breath  of  the  former, 
and  along  the  lanes  and  roadsides  we  inhale  the 
delicate  fragrance  of  the  wild  grape.  The  early 
grasses,  too,  with  their  frostlike  bloom,  contribute 
something  very  welcome  to  the  breath  of  June. 

Nearly  every  season  I  note  what  I  call  the  bridal 
day  of  summer  —  a  white,  lucid,  shining  day,  with 
a  delicate  veil  of  mist  softening  all  outlines.  How 
the  river  dances  and  sparkles;  how  the  new  leaves 
of  all  the  trees  shine  under  the  sun;  the  air  has  a 
soft  lustre;  there  is  a  haze,  it  is  not  blue,  but  a  kind 
of  shining,  diffused  nimbus.  No  clouds,  the  sky  a 
bluish  white,  very  soft  and  delicate.  It  is  the  nuptial 
day  of  the  season;  the  sun  fairly  takes  the  earth  to 
27 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

be  his  own,  for  better  or  for  worse,  on  such  a  day,  and 
what  marriages  there  are  going  on  all  about  us :  the 
marriages  of  the  flowers,  of  the  bees,  of  the  birds. 
Everything  suggests  life,  love,  fruition.  These 
bridal  days  are  often  repeated;  the  serenity  and 
equipoise  of  the  elements  combine.  They  were  such 
days  as  these  that  the  poet  Lowell  had  in  mind  when 
he  exclaimed,  "  What  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June  ?  " 
Here  is  the  record  of  such  a  day,  June  1,  1883: 
"Day  perfect  in  temper,  in  mood,  in  everything. 
Foliage  all  out  except  on  button-balls  and  celtis, 
and  putting  on  its  dark  green  summer  color,  solid 
shadows  under  the  trees,  and  stretching  down  the 
slopes.  A  few  indolent  summer  clouds  here  and 
there.  A  day  of  gently  rustling  and  curtsying 
leaves,  when  the  breeze  almost  seems  to  blow  up- 
ward. The  fields  of  full-grown,  nodding  rye  slowly 
stir  and  sway  like  vast  assemblages  of  people.  How 
the  chimney  swallows  chipper  as  they  sweep  past! 
The  vireo's  cheerful  warble  echoes  in  the  leafy 
maples;  the  branches  of  the  Norway  spruce  and  the 
hemlocks  have  gotten  themselves  new  light  green 
tips;  the  dandelion's  spheres  of  ethereal  down  rise 
above  the  grass:  and  now  and  then  one  of  them 
suddenly  goes  down:  the  little  chippy,  or  social 
sparrow,  has  thrown  itself  upon  the  frail  stalk  and 
brought  it  to  the  ground,  to  feed  upon  its  seeds; 
here  it  gets  the  first  fruits  of  the  season.  The  first 
red  and  white  clover  heads  have  just  opened,  the 
28 


THE  COMING  OF  SUMMER 

yellow  rock-rose  and  the  sweet  viburnum  are  in 
bloom;  the  bird  chorus  is  still  full  and  animated; 
the  keys  of  the  red  maple  strew  the  ground,  and  the 
cotton  of  the  early  everlasting  drifts  upon  the  air." 
For  several  days  there  was  but  little  change.  "  Get- 
ting toward  the  high  tide  of  summer.  The  air  well 
warmed  up,  Nature  in  her  jocund  mood,  still,  all 
leaf  and  sap.  The  days  are  idyllic.  I  lie  on  my 
back  on  the  grass  in  the  shade  of  the  house,  and 
look  up  to  the  soft,  slowly  moving  clouds,  and  to 
the  chimney  swallows  disporting  themselves  up 
there  in  the  breezy  depths.  No  hardening  in  vege- 
tation yet.  The  moist,  hot,  fragrant  breath  of  the 
fields  —  mingled  odor  of  blossoming  grasses,  clover, 
daisies,  rye  —  the  locust  blossoms,  dropping.  What 
a  humming  about  the  hives;  what  freshness  in  the 
shade  of  every  tree;  what  contentment  in  the  flocks 
and  herds!  The  springs  are  yet  full  and  cold;  the 
shaded  watercourses  and  pond  margins  begin  to 
draw  one."  Go  to  the  top  of  the  hill  on  such  a 
morning,  say  by  nine  o'clock,  and  see  how  unspeak- 
ably fresh  and  full  the  world  looks.  The  morning 
shadows  yet  linger  everywhere,  even  in  the  sun- 
shine; a  kind  of  blue  coolness  and  freshness,  the 
vapor  of  dew  tinting  the  air. 

Heat  and  moisture,  the  father  and  mother  of  all 
that  lives,  when  June  has  plenty  of  these,  the  in- 
crease is  sure. 

Early  in  June  the  rye  and  wheat  heads  begin  to 
29 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

nod;  the  motionless  stalks  have  a  reflective,  medita- 
tive air.  A  little  while  ago,  when  their  heads  were 
empty  or  filled  only  with  chaff  and  sap,  how  straight 
up  they  held  them !  Now  that  the  grain  is  forming, 
they  have  a  sober,  thoughtful  look.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  pleasing  spectacles  of  June,  a  field  of  rye 
gently  shaken  by  the  wind.  How  the  breezes  are 
defined  upon  its  surface  —  a  surface  as  sensitive 
as  that  of  water;  how  they  trip  along,  little  breezes 
and  big  breezes  together!  Just  as  this  glaucous 
green  surface  of  the  rye-field  bends  beneath  the  light 
tread  of  the  winds,  so,  we  are  told,  the  crust  of  the 
earth  itself  bends  beneath  the  giant  strides  of  the 
great  atmospheric  waves. 

There  is  one  bird  I  seldom  hear  till  June,  and  that 
is  the  cuckoo.  Sometimes  the  last  days  of  May 
bring  him,  but  oftener  it  is  June  before  I  hear  his 
note.  The  cuckoo  is  the  true  recluse  among  our 
birds.  I  doubt  if  there  is  any  joy  in  his  soul.  "Rain- 
crow,"  he  is  called  in  some  parts  of  the  country. 
His  call  is  supposed  to  bode  rain.  Why  do  other 
birds,  the  robin  for  instance,  often  make  war  upon 
the  cuckoo,  chasing  it  from  the  vicinity  of  their 
nests?  There  seems  to  be  something  about  the 
cuckoo  that  makes  its  position  among  the  birds 
rather  anomalous.  Is  it  at  times  a  parasitical  bird, 
dropping  its  eggs  into  other  birds'  nests?  Or  is 
there  some  suggestion  of  the  hawk  about  our  species 
as  well  as  about  the  European  ?  I  do  not  know.  I 
30 


THE  COMING  OF  SUMMER 

only  know  that  it  seems  to  be  regarded  with  a  sus- 
picious eye  by  other  birds,  and  that  it  wanders  about 
at  night  in  a  way  that  no  respectable  bird  should. 
The  birds  that  come  in  March,  as  the  bluebird,  the 
robin,  the  song  sparrow,  the  starling,  build  in 
April;  the  April  birds,  such  as  the  brown  thrasher, 
the  barn  swallow,  the  chewink,  the  water-thrush, 
the  oven-bird,  the  chippy,  the  high-hole,  the 
meadowlark,  build  in  May,  while  the  May  birds, 
the  kingbird,  the  wood  thrush,  the  oriole,  the  orchard 
starling,  and  the  warblers,  build  in  June.  The 
April  nests  are  exposed  to  the  most  dangers:  the 
storms,  the  crows,  the  squirrels,  are  all  liable  to  cut 
them  off.  The  midsummer  nests,  like  that  of  the 
goldfinch  and  the  waxwing,  or  cedar-bird,  are  the 
safest  of  all. 

In  March  the  door  of  the  seasons  first  stands  ajar 
a  little;  in  April  it  is  opened  much  wider;  in  May 
the  windows  go  up  also;  and  in  June  the  walls  are 
fairly  taken  down  and  the  genial  currents  have  free 
play  everywhere.  The  event  of  March  in  the  coun- 
try is  the  first  good  sap  day,  when  the  maples  thrill 
with  the  kindling  warmth;  the  event  of  April  is  the 
new  furrow  and  the  first  seeding;  —  how  ruddy  and 
warm  the  soil  looks  just  opened  to  the  sun !  —  the 
event  of  May  is  the  week  of  orchard  bloom;  with 
what  sweet,  pensive  gladness  one  walks  beneath  the 
pink- white  masses,  while  long,  long  thoughts  de- 
scend upon  him!  See  the  impetuous  orioles  chase 
31 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

one  another  amid  the  branches,  shaking  down  the 
fragrant  snow.  Here  the  rose-breasted  grosbeak  is 
in  the  blooming  cherry  tree,  snipping  off  the  blos- 
soms with  that  heavy  beak  of  his  —  a  spot  of  crim- 
son and  black  half  hidden  in  masses  of  white  petals. 
This  orchard  bloom  travels  like  a  wave.  In  March 
it  is  in  the  Carolinas;  by  the  middle  of  April  its 
crest  has  reached  the  Potomac;  a  week  or  ten  days 
later  it  is  in  New  Jersey;  then  in  May  it  sweeps 
through  New  York  and  New  England ;  and  early  in 
June  it  is  breaking  upon  the  orchards  in  Canada. 
Finally,  the  event  of  June  is  the  fields  ruddy  with 
clover  and  milk-white  with  daisies. 


Ill 

A   BREATH   OF   APRIL 


IT  would  not  be  easy  to  say  which  is  our  finest 
or  most  beautiful  wild  flower,  but  certainly  the 
most  poetic  and  the  best  beloved  is  the  arbutus.  So 
early,  so  lowly,  so  secretive  there  in  the  moss  and 
dry  leaves,  so  fragrant,  tinged  with  the  hues  of 
youth  and  health,  so  hardy  and  homelike,  it  touches 
the  heart  as  no  other  does. 

April's  flower  offers  the  first  honey  to  the  bee 
and  the  first  fragrance  to  the  breeze.  Modest, 
exquisite,  loving  the  evergreens,  loving  the  rocks, 
untamable,  it  is  the  very  spirit  and  breath  of  the 
woods.  Trailing,  creeping  over  the  ground,  hiding 
its  beauty  under  withered  leaves,  stiff  and  hard  in 
foliage,  but  in  flower  like  the  cheek  of  a  maiden. 

One  may  brush  away  the  April  snow  and  find 
this  finer  snow  beneath  it.  Oh,  the  arbutus  days, 
what  memories  and  longings  they  awaken!  In  this 
latitude  they  can  hardly  be  looked  for  before  April, 
and  some  seasons  not  till  the  latter  days  of  the 
month.  The  first  real  warmth,  the  first  tender 
skies,  the  first  fragrant  showers  —  the  woods  are 
33 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

flooded  with  sunlight,  and  the  dry  leaves  and  the  leaf- 
mould  emit  a  pleasant  odor.  One  kneels  down  or  lies 
down  beside  a  patch  of  the  trailing  vine,  he  brushes 
away  the  leaves,  he  lifts  up  the  blossoming  sprays 
and  examines  and  admires  them  at  leisure;  some 
are  white,  some  are  white  and  pink,  a  few  are  deep 
pink.  It  is  enough  to  bask  there  in  the  sunlight 
on  the  ground  beside  them,  drinking  in  their  odor, 
feasting  the  eye  on  their  tints  and  forms,  hearing  the 
April  breezes  sigh  and  murmur  in  the  pines  or  hem- 
locks near  you,  living  in  a  present  fragrant  with  the 
memory  of  other  days.  Lying  there,  half  dreaming, 
half  observing,  if  you  are  not  in  communion  with 
the  very  soul  of  spring,  then  there  is  a  want  of  soul 
in  you.  You  may  hear  the  first  swallow  twittering 
from  the  sky  above  you,  or  the  first  mellow  drum  of 
the  grouse  come  up  from  the  woods  below  or  from 
the  ridge  opposite.  The  bee  is  abroad  in  the  air, 
finding  her  first  honey  in  the  flower  by  your  side 
and  her  first  pollen  in  the  pussy-willows  by  the 
watercourses  below  you.  The  tender,  plaintive 
love-note  of  the  chickadee  is  heard  here  and  there 
in  the  woods.  He  utters  it  while  busy  on  the  catkins 
of  the  poplars,  from  which  he  seems  to  be  extracting 
some  kind  of  food.  Hawks  are  screaming  high  in 
the  air  above  the  woods;  the  plow  is  just  tasting 
the  first  earth  in  the  rye  or  corn  stubble  (and  it 
tastes  good).  The  earth  looks  good,  it  smells  good, 
it  is  good.  By  the  creek  in  the  woods  you  hear  the 
34 


A  BREATH  OF  APRIL 

first  water- thrush  —  a  short,  bright,  ringing,  hurried 
song.  If  you  approach,  the  bird  flies  swiftly  up  or 
down  the  creek,  uttering  an  emphatic  "  chip,  chip." 
In  wild,  delicate  beauty  we  have  flowers  that  far 
surpass  the  arbutus:  the  columbine,  for  instance, 
jetting  out  of  a  seam  in  a  gray  ledge  of  rock,  its 
many  crimson  and  flame-colored  flowers  shaking  in 
the  breeze;  but  it  is  mostly  for  the  eye.  The  spring- 
beauty,  the  painted  trillium,  the  fringed  polygala, 
the  showy  lady's-slipper,  are  all  more  striking  to 
look  upon,  but  they  do  not  quite  touch  the  heart; 
they  lack  the  soul  that  perfume  suggests.  Their 
charms  do  not  abide  with  you  as  do  those  of  the 

arbutus. 

n 

These  still,  hazy,  brooding  mid-April  mornings, 
when  the  farmer  first  starts  afield  with  his  plow, 
when  his  boys  gather  the  buckets  in  the  sugar-bush, 
when  the  high-hole  calls  long  and  loud  through  the 
hazy  distance,  when  the  meadowlark  sends  up  her 
clear,  silvery  shaft  of  sound  from  the  meadow, 
when  the  bush  sparrow  trills  in  the  orchard,  when 
the  soft  maples  look  red  against  the  wood,  or  their 
fallen  bloom  flecks  the  drying  mud  in  the  road,  — 
such  mornings  are  about  the  most  exciting  and  sug- 
gestive of  the  whole  year.  How  good  the  fields 
look,  how  good  the  freshly  turned  earth  looks !  — 
one  could  almost  eat  it  as  does  the  horse;  —  the 
stable  manure  just  being  drawn  out  and  scattered 
35 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

looks  good  and  smells  good ;  every  farmer's  house 
and  barn  looks  inviting;  the  children  on  the  way 
to  school  with  their  dinner-pails  in  their  hands  — 
how  they  open  a  door  into  the  past  for  you !  Some- 
times they  have  sprays  of  arbutus  in  their  button- 
holes, or  bunches  of  hepatica.  The  partridge  is 
drumming  in  the  woods,  and  the  woodpeckers  are 
drumming  on  dry  limbs. 

The  day  is  veiled,  but  we  catch  such  glimpses 
through  the  veil.  The  bees  are  getting  pollen  from 
the  pussy-willows  and  soft  maples,  and  the  first 
honey  from  the  arbutus. 

It  is  at  this  time  that  the  fruit  and  seed  catalogues 
are  interesting  reading,  and  that  the  cuts  of  farm 
implements  have  a  new  fascination.  The  soil  calls 
to  one.  All  over  the  country,  people  are  responding 
to  the  call,  and  are  buying  farms  and  moving  upon 
them.  My  father  and  mother  moved  upon  their 
farm  in  the  spring  of  1828;  I  moved  here  upon 
mine  in  March,  1874. 

I  see  the  farmers,  now  going  along  their  stone 
fences  and  replacing  the  stones  that  the  frost  or  the 
sheep  and  cattle  have  thrown  off,  and  here  and 
there  laying  up  a  bit  of  wall  that  has  tumbled  down. 

There  is  rare  music  now  in  the  unmusical  call  of 
the  phcebe-bird  —  it  is  so  suggestive. 

The  drying  road  appeals  to  one  as  it  never  does 
at  any  other  season.  When  I  was  a  farm-boy,  it 
was  about  this  time  that  I  used  to  get  out  of  my 


A  BREATH  OF  APRIL 

boots  for  half  an  hour  and  let  my  bare  feet  feel  the 
ground  beneath  them  once  more.  There  was  a 
smooth,  dry,  level  place  in  the  road  near  home, 
and  along  this  I  used  to  run,  and  exult  in  that  sense 
of  lightfootedness  which  is  so  keen  at  such  times. 
What  a  feeling  of  freedom,  of  emancipation,  and  of 
joy  in  the  returning  spring  I  used  to  experience  in 
those  warm  April  twilights! 

I  think  every  man  whose  youth  was  spent  on  the 
farm,  whatever  his  life  since,  must  have  moments 
at  this  season  when  he  longs  to  go  back  to  the  soil. 
How  its  sounds,  its  odors,  its  occupations,  its  asso- 
ciations, come  back  to  him!  Would  he  not  like  to 
return  again  to  help  rake  up  the  litter  of  straw  and 
stalks  about  the  barn,  or  about  the  stack  on  the 
hill  where  the  grass  is  starting  ?  Would  he  not  like 
to  help  pick  the  stone  from  the  meadow,  or  mend 
the  brush  fence  on  the  mountain  where  the  sheep 
'  roam,  or  hunt  up  old  Brindle's  calf  in  the  woods, 
or  gather  oven-wood  for  his  mother  to  start  again 
the  big  brick  oven  with  its  dozen  loaves  of  rye 
bread,  or  see  the  plow  crowding  the  lingering  snow- 
banks on  the  side-hill,  or  help  his  father  break  and 
swingle  and  hatchel  the  flax  in  the  barnyard  ? 

When  I  see  a  farm  advertised  for  rent  or  for  sale 
in  the  spring,  I  want  to  go  at  once  and  look  it  over. 
All  the  particulars  interest  me  —  so  many  acres  of 
meadow-land,  so  many  of  woodland,  so  many  of 
pasture  —  the  garden,  the  orchard,  the  outbuild- 
37 


LEAP  AND  TENDRIL 

ings,  the  springs,  the  creek  —  I  see  them  all,  and 
am  already  half  in  possession. 

Even  Thoreau  felt  this  attraction,  and  recorded 
in  his  Journal :  "  I  know  of  no  more  pleasing  em- 
ployment than  to  ride  about  the  country  with  a 
companion  very  early  in  the  spring,  looking  at 
farms  with  a  view  to  purchasing,  if  not  paying  for 
them." 

Blessed  is  the  man  who  loves  the  soil! 

in 

One  mid-April  morning  two  pairs  of  bluebirds 
were  in  very  active  and  at  times  violent  courtship 
about  my  grounds.  I  could  not  quite  understand  the 
meaning  of  all  the  fuss  and  flutter.  Both  birds  of 
each  pair  were  very  demonstrative,  but  the  female 
in  each  case  the  more  so.  She  followed  the  male 
everywhere,  lifting  and  twinkling  her  wings,  and 
apparently  seeking  to  win  him  by  both  word  and 
gesture.  If  she  was  not  telling  him  by  that  cheery, 
animated,  confiding,  softly-endearing  speech  of 
hers,  which  she  poured  out  incessantly,  how  much 
she  loved  him,  what  was  she  saying?  She  was  con- 
stantly filled  with  a  desire  to  perch  upon  the  precise 
spot  where  he  was  sitting,  and  if  he  had  not  moved 
away,  I  think  she  would  have  alighted  upon  his 
back.  New  and  then,  when  she  flitted  away  from 
him,  he  followed  her  with  like  gestures  and  tones 
and  demonstrations  of  affection,  but  never  with 
38 


A  BREATH   OF  APRIL 

quite  the  same  ardor.  The  two  pairs  kept  near  each 
other  about  the  house,  the  bird-boxes,  the  trees, 
the  posts  and  vines  in  the  vineyard,  filling  the  ear 
with  their  soft,  insistent  warbles,  and  the  eye  with 
their  twinkling  azure  wings. 

Was  it  this  constant  presence  of  rivals  on  both 
sides  that  so  stimulated  them  and  kept  them  up 
to  such  a  pitch  of  courtship?  Finally,  after  I  had 
watched  them  over  an  hour,  the  birds  began  to 
come  into  collision.  As  they  met  in  the  vineyard, 
the  two  males  clinched  and  fell  to  the  ground, 
lying  there  for  a  moment  with  wings  sprawled  out, 
like  birds  brought  down  by  a  gun.  Then  they 
separated,  and  each  returned  to  his  mate,  warbling 
and  twinkling  his  wings.  Very  soon  the  females 
clinched  and  fell  to  the  ground  and  fought  savagely, 
rolling  over  and  over  each  other,  clawing  and 
tweaking  and  locking  beaks  and  hanging  on  like 
bull  terriers.  They  did  this  repeatedly;  once  one 
of  the  males  dashed  in  and  separated  them,  by 
giving  one  of  the  females  a  sharp  tweak  and  blow. 
Then  the  males  were  at  it  again,  their  blue  plumage 
mixing  with  the  green  grass  and  ruffled  by  the 
ruddy  soil.  What  a  soft,  feathery,  ineffectual  battle 
it  seemed  in  both  cases;  no  sound,  no  blood,  no 
flying  feathers,  just  a  sudden  mixing  up  and  general 
disarray  of  blue  wings  and  tails  and  ruddy  breasts, 
there  on  the  ground;  assault  but  no  visible  wounds; 
thrust  of  beak  and  grip  of  claw,  but  no  feather 
39 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

loosened  and  but  little  ruffling;  long  holding  of  one 
down  by  the  other,  but  no  cry  of  pain  or  fury.  It 
was  the  kind  of  battle  that  one  likes  to  witness. 
The  birds  usually  locked  beaks,  and  held  their  grip 
half  a  minute  at  a  time.  One  of  the  females  would 
always  alight  by  the  struggling  males  and  lift  her 
wings  and  utter  her  soft  notes,  but  what  she  said  — 
whether  she  was  encouraging  one  of  the  blue  coats 
or  berating  the  other,  or  imploring  them  both  to 
desist,  or  egging  them  on  — I  could  not  tell.  So  far 
as  I  could  understand  her  speech,  it  was  the  same 
as  she  had  been  uttering  to  her  mate  all  the  time. 

The  language  of  birds  is  so  limited  that  one 
cannot  always  tell  their  love-calls  from  their  bat- 
tle-cries. I  recognize  three  notes  in  the  bluebird  — 
a  simple,  plaintive  call  uttered  in  the  air  by  the  mi- 
grating birds,  both  fall  and  spring,  which  is  like 
the  word  "pure,"  "pure;"  then  the  animated  war- 
bling calls  and  twitterings,  during  the  mating  sea- 
son, which  are  uttered  in  a  fond,  reassuring  tone, 
usually  accompanied  by  that  pretty  wing  gesture; 
then  the  call  of  alarm  when  some  enemy  approaches 
the  nest  or  a  hawk  appears. 

This  last  note  is  soft  like  the  others,  but  the  tone 
is  different;  it  is  sorrowful  and  apprehensive.  Most 
of  our  song  birds  have  these  three  notes  expressive 
of  love,  alarm,  and  fellowship.  The  last-named  call 
seems  to  keep  them  in  touch  with  one  another.  I 
might  perhaps  add  to  this  list  the  scream  of  distress 
40 


A  BREATH  OF  APRIL 

which  most  birds  utter  when  caught  by  a  cat  or  a 
hawk  —  the  voice  or*  uncontrolled  terror  and  pain, 
which  is  nearly  the  same  in  all  species  —  disso- 
nant and  piercing.  The  other  notes  and  calls  are 
characteristic,  but  this  last  is  the  simple  screech  of 
common  terrified  nature. 

When  my  bluebirds  dashed  at  each  other  with 
beak  and  claw,  their  preliminary  utterances  had 
to  my  ears  anything  but  a  hostile  sound.  Indeed, 
for  the  bluebird  to  make  a  harsh,  discordant  sound 
seems  out  of  the  question.  Once,  when  the  two 
males  lay  upon  the  ground  with  outspread  wings 
and  locked  beaks,  a  robin  flew  down  by  them  and 
for  a  moment  gazed  intently  at  the  blue  splash 
upon  the  grass,  and  then  went  his  way. 

As  the  birds  drifted  about  the  grounds,  first  the 
males,  then  the  females  rolling  on  the  grass  or  in 
the  dust  in  fierce  combat,  and  between  times  the 
members  of  each  pair  assuring  each  other  of  undy- 
ing interest  and  attachment,  I  followed  them,  ap- 
parently quite  unnoticed  by  them.  Sometimes  they 
would  lie  more  than  a  minute  upon  the  ground, 
each  trying  to  keep  his  own  or  to  break  the  other's 
hold.  They  seemed  so  oblivious  of  everything  about 
them  that  I  wondered  if  they  might  not  at  such  times 
fall  an  easy  prey  to  cats  and  hawks.  Let  me  put 
their  watchfulness  to  the  test,  I  said.  So,  as  the  two 
males  clinched  again  and  fell  to  the  ground,  I 
cautiously  approached  them,  hat  in  hand.  When 
41 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

ten  feet  away  and  unregarded,  I  made  a  sudden 
dash  and  covered  them  with  my  hat.  The  struggle 
continued  for  a  few  seconds  under  there,  then  all 
was  still.  Sudden  darkness  had  fallen  upon  the 
field  of  battle.  What  did  they  think  had  happened  ? 
Presently  their  heads  and  wings  began  to  brush  the 
inside  of  my  hat.  Then  all  was  still  again.  Then  I 
spoke  to  them,  called  to  them,  exulted  over  them, 
but  they  betrayed  no  excitement  or  alarm.  Occa- 
sionally a  head  or  a  body  came  in  gentle  contact 
with  the  top  or  the  sides  of  my  hat. 

But  the  two  females  were  evidently  agitated  by 
the  sudden  disappearance  of  their  contending 
lovers,  and  began  uttering  their  mournful  alarm- 
note.  After  a  minute  or  two  I  lifted  one  side  of  my 
hat  and  out  darted  one  of  the  birds;  then  I  lifted 
the  hat  from  the  other.  One  of  the  females  then 
rushed,  apparently  with  notes  of  joy  and  congratu- 
lation, to  one  of  the  males,  who  gave  her  a  spiteful 
tweak  and  blow.  Then  the  other  came  and  he 
served  her  the  same.  He  was  evidently  a  little 
bewildered,  and  not  certain  what  had  happened 
or  who  was  responsible  for  it.  Did  he  think  the  two 
females  were  in  some  way  to  blame  ?  But  he  was 
soon  reconciled  to  one  of  them  again,  as  was  the 
other  male  with  the  other,  yet  the  two  couples  did 
not  separate  till  the  males  had  come  in  collision 
once  more.  Presently,  however,  they  drifted  apart, 
and  each  pair  was  soon  holding  an  animated  con- 
42 


A  BREATH  OF  APRIL 

versation,  punctuated  by  those  pretty  wing  gestures, 
about  the  two  bird-boxes. 

These  scenes  of  love  and  rivalry  had  lasted  nearly 
all  the  forenoon,  and  matters  between  the  birds 
apparently  remained  as  they  were  before  —  the 
members  of  each  pair  quite  satisfied  with  each 
other.  One  pair  occupied  one  of  the  bird-boxes  in 
the  vineyard  and  reared  two  broods  there  during 
the  season,  but  the  other  pair  drifted  away  and 
took  up  their  abode  somewhere  else. 

If  they  had  come  to  an  understanding,  why  this 
continued  demonstration  and  this  war  between 
them  ?  The  unusual  thing  was  the  interest  and  the 
activity  of  the  females.  They  outdid  the  males  in 
making  love  and  in  making  war.  With  most  species 
of  our  birds,  the  females  are  quite  indifferent  to  the 
blandishments  of  the  males,  if  they  are  not  actually 
bored  by  them.  They  flee  from  them,  or  spitefully 
resent  their  advances.  In  April  a  female  robin 
may  often  be  seen  fighting  off  three  or  four  of  her 
obstreperous  admirers,  as  if  every  feminine  senti- 
ment she  possessed  had  been  outraged. 

But  the  bluebird  is  an  exception;  the  female  is 
usually  very  responsive,  but  only  in  the  instance 
above  related  have  I  seen  her  so  active  in  the  court- 
ship. 


IV 
A   WALK   IN   THE   FIELDS 

LET  us  go  and  walk  in  the  fields.  It  is  the 
middle  of  a  very  early  March  —  a  March  that 
has  in  some  way  cut  out  April  and  got  into  its  place. 
I  knew  an  Irish  laborer,  who  during  his  last 
illness  thought,  when  spring  came,  if  he  could  walk 
in  the  fields,  he  would  get  well.  I  have  observed 
that  farmers,  when  harassed  by  trouble,  or  weighed 
down  by  grief,  are  often  wont  to  go  and  walk  alone 
in  the  fields.  They  find  dumb  sympathy  and  com- 
panionship there.  I  knew  a  farmer  who,  after  the 
death  of  his  only  son,  would  frequently  get  up  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  and  go  and  walk  in  his 
fields.  It  was  said  that  he  had  been  harsh  and  un- 
just to  his  son,  and,  during  the  last  day  the  latter 
had  worked  and  when  the  fatal  illness  was  coming 
upon  him,  the  father  had  severely  upbraided  him 
because  he  left  his  task  and  sat  for  a  while  under 
the  fence.  One  can  fancy  him  going  to  this  very 
spot  in  his  midnight  wanderings,  and  standing  in 
mute  agony  where  the  cruel  words  had  been  spoken, 
or  throwing  himself  upon  the  ground,  pleading  in 
vain  at  the  door  of  the  irrevocable  past.  That  door 
45 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

never  opens  again,  plead  you  there  till  your  heart 
breaks. 

A  farmer's  fields  become  in  time  almost  a  part 
of  himself:  his  life  history  is  written  all  over  them; 
virtue  has  gone  out  of  himself  into  them;  he  has 
fertilized  them  with  the  sweat  of  his  brow ;  he  knows 
the  look  and  the  quality  of  each  one.  This  one  he 
reclaimed  from  the  wilderness  when  he  came  on  the 
farm  as  a  young  man;  he  sowed  rye  among  the 
stumps  and  scratched  it  in  with  a  thorn  brush;  as 
the  years  went  by  he  saw  the  stumps  slowly  decay; 
he  would  send  his  boys  to  set  fire  to  them  in  the  dry 
spring  weather ;  —  I  was  one  of  those  boys,  and  it 
seems  as  if  I  could  smell  the  pungent  odor  of  those 
burning  stumps  at  this  moment:  now  this  field  is 
one  of  his  smoothest,  finest  meadows.  This  one  was 
once  a  rough  pasture;  he  pried  up  or  blasted  out 
the  rocks,  and  with  his  oxen  drew  them  into  a 
line  along  the  border  of  the  woods,  and  with  stone 
picked  or  dug  from  the  surface  built  upon  them  a 
solid  four-foot  wall;  now  the  mowing-machine  runs 
evenly  where  once  the  cattle  grazed  with  difficulty. 

I  was  a  boy  when  that  field  was  cleaned  up.  I  took 
a  hand — a  boy's  hand — in  the  work.  I  helped  pick 
up  the  loose  stone,  which  we  drew  upon  a  stone-boat 
shod  with  green  poles.  It  was  back-aching  work,  and 
it  soon  wore  the  skin  thin  on  the  ends  of  the  fingers. 
How  the  crickets  and  ants  and  beetles  would  rush 
about  when  we  uncovered  them!  They  no  doubt 
46 


A  WALK  IN  THE  FIELDS 

looked  upon  the  stone  that  sheltered  them  as  an 
old  institution  that  we  had  no  right  to  remove.  No 
right,  my  little  folk,  only  the  might  of  the  stronger. 
Sometimes  a  flat  stone  would  prove  the  roof  of 
a  mouse-nest  —  a  blinking,  bead-eyed,  meadow- 
mouse.  What  consternation  would  seize  him,  too,  as 
he  would  rush  off  along  the  little  round  beaten  ways 
under  the  dry  grass  and  weeds!  Many  of  the  large 
bowlders  were  deeply  imbedded  in  the  soil,  and  only 
stuck  their  noses  or  heads,  so  to  speak,  up  through 
the  turf.  These  we  would  first  tackle  with  the  big 
lever,  a  long,  dry,  ironwood  pole,  as  heavy  as  one 
could  handle,  shod  with  a  horseshoe.  With  the 
end  of  this  thrust  under  the  end  or  edge  of  a  bowlder, 
and  resting  upon  a  stone  for  a  fulcrum,  we  would 
begin  the  assault.  Inch  by  inch  the  turf-bound  rock 
would  yield.  Sometimes  the  lever  would  slip  its 
hold,  and  come  down  upon  our  heads  if  we  were  not 
watchful.  As  the  rock  yielded,  the  lever  required 
more  bait,  as  the  farmer  calls  it,  —  an  addition  to 
the  fulcrum.  After  the  rock  was  raised  sufficiently, 
we  would  prop  it  up  with  stones,  arrange  a  skid  or 
skids  under  it  —  green  beech  poles  cut  in  the  woods 
—  wrap  a  chain  around  it,  and  hitch  the  oxen  to  it, 
directing  them  to  the  right  or  left  to  turn  the  bowlder 
out  of  its  bed  and  place  it  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground.  When  this  was  accomplished,  then  came  the 
dead  straight  pull  to  the  line  of  the  fence.  An  old, 
experienced  ox-team  know  what  is  before  them,  or 
47 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

rather  behind  them;  they  have  felt  the  bowlder  and 
sized  it  up.  At  the  word  and  the  crack  of  the  whip 
they  bend  their  heads  and  throw  their  weight  upon 
the  yoke.  Now  the  hickory  bows  settle  into  their 
shoulders,  they  kink  their  tails  and  hump  their  backs, 
their  sharp  hoofs  cut  the  turf,  and  the  great  inert 
mass  moves.  Tearing  up  the  sod,  grinding  over 
stones,  the  shouts  of  the  excited  driver  urging  them 
on,  away  they  go  toward  the  line.  The  peculiar  and 
agreeable  odor  of  burnt  and  ground  stone  arises 
from  the  rear.  Only  a  few  yards  at  a  time;  how 
the  oxen  puff  as  they  halt  to  take  breath  and  lap 
their  tongues  out  over  their  moist  muzzles!  Then 
they  bend  to  the  work  again,  the  muscular  effort 
reaching  their  very  tails.  Thus  the  work  goes  on 
for  several  days  or  a  week,  till  the  row  of  bottom 
rocks  is  complete.  If  there  are  others  remaining 
in  the  field,  then  the  row  is  doubled  up  till  the  land 
is  cleaned. 

What  a  torn  and  wounded  appearance  that  sec- 
tion of  ground  presents,  its  surface  everywhere 
marked  with  red  stripes  or  bands,  each  ending  in  or 
starting  from  a  large  and  deep  red  cavity  in  the 
sward!  But  soon  the  plow  will  come,  equalizing 
and  obliterating  and  writing  another  history  upon 
the  page. 

There  is  something  to  me  peculiarly  interesting 
in  stone  walls  —  a  kind  of  rude  human  expression 
to  them,  suggesting  the  face  of  the  old  farmer  him- 
48 


A  WALK  IN  THE  FIELDS 

self.  How  they  climb  the  hills  and  sweep  through 
the  valleys.  They  decay  not,  yet  they  grow  old  and 
decrepit ;  little  by  little  they  lose  their  precision  and 
firmness,  they  stagger,  then  fall.  In  a  still,  early 
spring  morning  or  April  twilight  one  often  hears  a 
rattle  of  stones  in  a  distant  field;  some  bit  of  old 
wall  is  falling.  The  lifetime  of  the  best  of  them  is 
rarely  threescore  and  ten.  The  other  day,  along  the 
highway,  I  saw  an  old  man  relaying  a  dilapidated 
stone  wall.  "Fifty-three  years  ago,"  he  said,  "I 
laid  this  wall.  When  it  is  laid  again,  I  shan't  have 
the  job."  It  is  rarely  now  that  one  sees  a  new  wall 
going  up.  The  fences  have  all  been  built,  and  the 
farmer  has  only  to  keep  them  in  repair. 

When  you  build  a  field  or  a  highway  wall,  do  not 
make  the  top  of  it  level  across  the  little  hollows; 
let  it  bend  to  the  uneven  surface,  let  it  look  flexible 
and  alive.  A  foundation  wall,  with  its  horizontal 
lines,  looks  stiff  and  formal,  but  a  wall  that  undu- 
lates along  like  a  live  thing  pleases  the  eye. 

When  I  was  a  boy  upon  the  old  farm,  my  father 
always  "  laid  out "  to  build  forty  or  fifty  rods  of  new 
wall,  or  rebuild  as  many  rods  of  old  wall,  each 
spring.  It  is  true  husbandry  to  fence  your  field 
with  the  stones  that  incumber  it,  to  utilize  obstacles. 
The  walls  upon  the  old  farm  of  which  I  am  think- 
ing have  each  a  history.  This  one,  along  the  lower 
side  of  the  road,  was  built  in  '46.  I  remember  the 
man  who  laid  it.  I  even  remember  something  of 
49 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

the  complexion  of  the  May  days  when  the  work 
was  going  on.  It  was  built  from  a  still  older  wall, 
and  new  material  added.  It  leans  and  staggers  in 
places  now  like  an  old  man,  but  it  is  still  a  sub- 
stantial fence.  This  one  upon  the  upper  side  of  the 
road,  my  father  told  me  he  built  the  year  he  came 
upon  the  farm,  which  was  in  '28.  He  paid  twenty 
cents  a  rod  for  having  it  laid  to  a  man  whose  grand- 
children are  now  gray-haired  men.  The  wall  has  a 
rock  foundation,  and  it  still  holds  its  course  without 
much  wavering. 

The  more  padding  there  is  in  a  stone  wall,  the 
less  enduring  it  is.  Let  your  stone  reach  clean 
through.  A  smooth  face  will  not  save  it;  a  loose  and 
cobbly  interior  will  be  its  ruin.  Let  there  be  a  broad 
foundation,  let  the  parts  be  well  bound  together, 
let  the  joints  be  carefully  broken,  and,  above  all, 
let  its  height  not  be  too  great  for  its  width.  If  it  is 
too  high,  it  will  topple  over;  if  its  interior  is  defec- 
tive, it  will  spread  and  collapse.  Time  searches  out 
its  every  weakness,  and  respects  only  good  material 
and  good  workmanship. 


V 

GAY   PLFMES   AND   DULL 


NOT  long  since,  one  of  our  younger  naturalists 
sent  me  a  photograph  of  a  fawn  in  a  field  of 
daisies,  and  said  that  he  took  the  picture  to  show 
what  he  considered  the  protective  value  of  the  spots. 
The  white  spots  of  the  fawn  did  blend  in  with  the 
daisies,  and  certainly  rendered  the  fawn  less  con- 
spicuous than  it  would  have  been  without  them, 
but  I  am  slow  to  believe  that  the  fawn  has  spots  that 
it  may  the  better  hide  in  a  daisy-field,  or,  in  fact, 
anywhere  else,  or  that  the  spots  have  ever  been 
sufficiently  protective  to  have  materially  aided  in 
the  perpetuity  of  the  deer  species.  What  use  they 
have,  if  any,  I  do  not  know,  any  more  than  I  know 
what  use  the  spots  on  the  leopard  or  the  giraffe 
have,  or  the  stripes  on  the  zebra.  I  can  only  con- 
jecture concerning  their  use.  The  panther  does 
not  have  spots,  and  seems  to  get  along  just  as  well 
without  them.  The  young  of  the  moose  and  the 
caribou  and  the  pronghorn  are  not  spotted,  and  yet 
their  habitat  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  deer. 
Why  some  forest  animals  are  uniformly  dark 
51 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

colored,  while  others  are  more  or  less  brilliantly 
striped  or  spotted,  is  a  question  not  easily  answered. 
It  is  claimed  that  spotted  and  striped  species  are 
more  diurnal  in  their  habits,  and  frequent  bushes 
and  open  glades,  while  the  dusky  species  are  more 
nocturnal,  and  frequent  dense  thickets.  In  a  gen- 
eral way  this  is  probably  true.  A  dappled  coat  is 
more  in  keeping  with  the  day  than  with  the  night, 
and  with  bushes  and  jungles  rather  than  with  plains 
or  dense  forests.  But  whether  its  protective  value, 
or  the  protective  value  of  the  dusky  coat,  is  the 
reason  for  its  being,  is  another  question. 

This  theory  of  the  protective  coloration  of  animals 
has  been  one  of  the  generally  accepted  ideas  in  all 
works  upon  natural  history  since  Darwin's  time. 
It  assumes  that  the  color  of  an  animal  is  as  much 
the  result  of  natural  selection  as  any  part  of  its 
structure  —  natural  selection  picking  out  and  pre- 
serving those  tints  that  were  the  most  useful  in 
concealing  the  animal  from  its  enemies  or  from  its 
prey.  If  in  this  world  no  animal  had  ever  preyed 
upon  another,  it  is  thought  that  their  colors  might 
have  been  very  different,  probably  much  more 
bizarre  and  inharmonious  than  they  are  at  present. 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  run  amuck  upon  this 
generally  accepted  theory  of  modern  naturalists, 
but  I  do  feel  disposed  to  shake  it  up  a  little,  and  to 
see,  if  I  can,  what  measure  of  truth  there  is  in  it. 
That  there  is  a  measure  of  truth  in  it  I  am  con- 
52 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

vinced,  but  that  it  has  been  greatly  overworked  in 
our  time,  and  that  more  has  been  put  upon  it  than 
it  can  bear,  of  this  also  I  am  convinced. 

I  think  we  are  safe  in  saying  that  a  bird  is  pro- 
tectively colored  when  the  color,  as  it  were,  strikes 
in,  and  the  bird  itself  acts  upon  the  theory  that  it 
is  in  a  measure  hidden  behind  its  assimilative 
plumage.  This  is  true  of  nearly  all  the  grouse  tribe. 
These  birds  seem  instinctively  to  know  the  value 
of  their  imitative  tints,  and  are  tame  or  wild  ac- 
cording as  their  tints  do  or  do  not  match  the  snow 
on  the  ground.  The  snow  keeps  the  secrets  of  the 
snow,  and  the  earth  keeps  the  secrets  of  the  earth, 
but  each  tells  upon  the  other.  Sportsmen  tell  me 
that  quail  will  not  "  lay  "  when  there  is  snow  upon 
the  ground.  The  snow  gives  them  away;  it  lights 
up  their  covers  in  the  weeds  and  the  bog  as  with  a 
lamp.  At  other  times  the  quail  will  "lay"  till  the 
hunter  almost  steps  upon  them.  His  dog  some- 
times picks  them  up.  What  is  the  meaning  of  this 
behavior  but  that  the  bird  feels  hidden  in  the  one 
case  and  not  in  the  other  ?  Moreover,  the  grouse  are 
all  toothsome;  and  this  fact  of  the  toothsomeness 
of  some  birds  and  the  toughness  and  unsavoriness 
of  others,  such  as  the  woodpecker,  the  crow  tribe, 
gulls,  divers,  cormorants,  and  the  like,  has  undoubt- 
edly played  some  part  in  their  natural  history.  But 
whether  they  are  dull-colored  because  they  are 
toothsome,  or  toothsome  because  they  are  dull- 
53 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

colored  —  who  shall  say  ?  Which  was  first,  the 
sweetness  or  the  color  ?  The  flesh  of  the  quail  and 
the  partridge  having  become  very  delectable  and 
much  sought  after  by  many  wild  creatures,  did 
Nature  make  compensation  by  giving  them  their 
assimilative  plumage  ?  or  were  the  two  facts  insep- 
arable from  the  first  ?  Yet  the  flesh  of  the  peacock 
is  said  to  be  as  delicate  as  that  of  the  turkey. 

The  sweetness  of  an  animal's  flesh  is  doubtless 
determined  by  its  food.  I  believe  no  one  eats  the 
Western  road-runner,  though  it  is  duller  of  color 
than  the  turkey.  Its  food  is  mice,  snakes,  lizards, 
centipedes,  and  other  vermin. 

Thus  far  I  can  follow  the  protective-colorists, 
but  not  much  farther. 

Wallace  goes  to  the  extent  of  believing  that  even 
nuts  are  protectively  colored  because  they  are  not 
to  be  eaten.  But  without  the  agency  of  birds  and 
the  small  rodents,  the  wingless  nuts,  such  as  chest- 
nuts, acorns,  hickory  nuts,  and  butternuts,  could 
never  get  widely  scattered;  so  that  if  they  were 
effectively  concealed  by  their  colors,  this  fact  would 
tend  to  their  extinction. 

If  the  colors  of  animals  were  as  vital  a  matter, 
and  the  result  of  the  same  adaptive  and  selective 
process,  as  their  varied  structures,  which  Darwin 
and  Wallace  teach,  then  it  would  seem  to  follow 
that  those  of  the  same  habits  and  of  the  same  or 
similar  habitat  would  be  similar  or  identical  in 
54 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

color,  which  is  not  commonly  the  case,  Thus  among 
the  birds,  the  waders  all  have  long  legs  and  long 
necks,  but  they  are  not  all  of  the  same  color.  The 
divers  all  have  short  legs  placed  in  the  rear,  but 
they  vary  greatly  in  color-markings.  How  greatly 
the  ducks  differ  in  coloration,  though  essentially 
the  same  in  structure!  Our  tree  warblers  are  of  all 
hues  and  combinations  of  hues,  though  so  alike  in 
habit  and  form.  The  painted  bunting  in  the  South- 
west is  gaudily  colored,  while  its  congeners  are  all 
more  plainly  dressed. 

In  England  the  thrush  that  answers  to  our  robin, 
being  almost  identical  in  form,  manner,  and  habit, 
is  black  as  a  coal.  The  crow  tribe  are  all  built  upon 
the  same  plan,  and  yet  they  show  a  very  great  di- 
versity of  colors.  Why  is  our  jay  so  showily  colored, 
and  the  Canada  jay  so  subdued  in  tint  ? 

The  hummingbirds  do  not  differ  much  in  their 
anatomy,  but  their  tints  differ  as  much  as  do  those 
of  precious  stones.  The  woodpeckers  show  a  variety 
of  markings  that  cannot  be  accounted  for  upon  any 
principle  of  utility  or  of  natural  selection.  Indeed, 
it  would  seem  as  if  in  the  colors  of  birds  and  mam- 
mals Nature  gave  herself  a  comparatively  free  hand, 
not  being  bound  by  the  same  rigid  necessity  as  in 
their  structures.  Within  certain  limits,  something 
like  caprice  or  accident  seems  to  prevail.  The  great 
law  of  assimilation,  or  harmonious  blending,  of 
which  I  shall  presently  have  more  to  say,  goes  on, 
55 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

but  it  is  checked  and  thwarted  and  made  sport  of 
by  other  tendencies. 

Then  the  principle  of  coloration  of  the  same  spe- 
cies does  not  always  hold  good  in  different  parts  of 
the  earth.  Our  northern  flycatchers  are  all  of  dull 
plumage,  but  in  Mexico  we  find  the  vermilion  fly- 
catcher, with  under  parts  of  bright  scarlet,  and  in 
Java  is  a  flycatcher  like  a  flame  of  fire.  With  us,  as 
soon  as  a  bird  touches  the  ground  it  takes  on  some 
ground  colors.  All  our  ground-feeders  are  more 
or  less  ground-tinted.  But  in  the  East  this  is  not 
to  the  same  extent  true.  Thus  our  pigeons  and 
doves  are  blue-gray  and  buff.  In  the  Molucca 
Islands  there  is  a  blue  and  purple  dove,  and  one 
species  with  coppery  green  plumage,  a  snow-white 
tail,  and  snow-white  pendent  feathers  on  the  neck. 
Our  thrushes  are  ground-feeders  and  are  ground- 
colored.  The  ground  thrushes  of  the  Malay  Archi- 
pelago are  much  more  brilliantly  marked.  One 
species  has  the  "upper  parts  soft  green,  the  head 
jet  black,  with  a  stripe  of  blue  and  brown  over  the 
eye;  at  the  base  of  the  tail  and  on  the  shoulders  are 
bands  of  bright  silvery  blue,  and  the  under-sides 
are  of  delicate  buff  with  a  stripe  of  rich  crimson  bor- 
ojered  with  black  on  the  belly."  Another  ground 
thrush  is  velvety  black  above,  relieved  by  a  breast 
of  pure  white,  shoulders  of  azure  blue,  and  belly  of 
vivid  crimson  —  one  of  the  most  beautiful  birds  of 
the  East,  Wallace  says.  The  Eastern  kingfishers  are 
56 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

also  much  more  brilliant  than  ours.  Our  gallina- 
ceous birds  are  all  dull  neutral-tinted,  but  look  at 
this  family  of  birds  in  the  Orient,  brilliant  beyond 
words  to  paint!  In  Africa  the  sand  grouse  is  bril- 
liantly marked.  There  are  also  snow-white  herons 
in  Africa,  and  black  and  white  ibises.  On  the  Aru 
Islands  in  the  Malay  Archipelago  is  a  flycatcher 
that  is  brilliant  black  and  bright  orange. 

In  our  hemisphere  the  swans  are  white,  the 
pigeons  are  blue,  and  the  parrots  are  green.  In 
Australia  the  swans  are  black,  and  there  is  a  black 
pigeon  and  a  black  parrot.  In  the  desert  of  Saljara 
most  of  the  birds  are  desert-colored,  but  there  are 
some  that  are  blue,  and  others  that  are  black  or 
brown  and  white.  It  is  said  that  the  Arctic  fox, 
which  is  snow-white  in  most  other  places,  remains 
blue  all  winter  in  Iceland.  No  doubt  there  are 
reasons  for  all  these  variations,  but  whatever  these 
reasons  are,  they  do  not  seem  to  favor  the  theory 
of  protective  coloration. 

The  more  local  an  animal  is,  the  more  its  color 
assimilates  with  its  surroundings;  or  perhaps  I 
should  say,  the  more  uniform  its  habitat,  the  more 
assimilative  its  coloring.  The  valley  quail  of  Cali- 
fornia frequents  trees  and  roosts  in  trees,  hence 
its  coloring  is  not  copied  from  the  ground.  It  is 
darker  and  bluer  than  our  Bob  White. 

Nature  dislikes  incongruities,  and  permits  them 
under  protest.  The  fleet  rabbit  with  eyes  ever  open 
57 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

is  as  protectively  colored  as  the  toad  or  the  tortoise. 
The  porcupine  with  his  armor  of  quills  is  as  hidden 
from  the  eye  as  the  coon,  or  the  wood  chuck,  or  the 
prairie-dog.  Climbing  things  are  as  well  hidden  as 
creeping  things,  the  mole  in  the  ground  as  well 
as  the  mouse  on  the  surface,  the  squirrel  that  flies 
as  well  as  the  squirrel  that  runs,  creatures  of  the 
night  as  well  as  creatures  of  the  day,  the  elephant, 
the  rhinoceros,  the  hippopotamus,  as  well  as  the 
smaller  animals  that  are  preyed  upon.  If  birds  are 
colored  to  conceal  them  from  hawks,  why  are  the 
wild  boar,  the  deer,  the  hare,  similarly  colored  ? 
They  are  not  hiding  from  hawks;  their  enemies  go 
by  scent.  The  hippopotamus  in  the  Nile  is  as  pro- 
tectively colored  as  the  camel  on  the  sands,  and  yet 
in  neither  case  can  protection  be  the  end  sought. 
In  Africa  there  is  a  white  rhinoceros.  Behold  our 
mountain  goat  nearly  as  white  as  snow  against  the 
dark  background  of  the  rocks  and  mountain-slopes 
where  he  lives,  and  yet  he  appears  to  thrive  as 
well  as  the  protectively  colored  deer.  Does  not  the 
lion  without  stripes  fare  just  as  well  as  the  tiger 
with?  Does  not  our  vermilion  flycatcher  fare  just 
as  well  as  its  cousins  of  duller  plumes?  Does  not 
the  golden  pheasant  fare  as  well  as  the  protectively 
colored  grouse?  Everywhere  the  creative  energy 
seems  to  have  its  plain,  modest  moods  and  its  gaudy, 
bizarre  moods,  both  in  the  vegetable  and  the  animal 
worlds.  Why  are  some  flowers  so  gaudy  and  others 
58 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

so  plain,  some  so  conspicuous  and  others  so  hid- 
den, some  insects  so  brilliant  and  others  so  dull, 
some  fruits  so  highly  colored  and  others  so  neutral  ? 
This  law  of  endless  variation  is  no  doubt  at  the 
bottom  of  all  these  things.  The  bird  has  varied 
in  color  from  its  parent,  and  as  the  variation  has 
not  told  against  it,  it  has  gone  on  and  intensified. 
So  with  the  flowers.  I  don't  believe  cherries  are  red 
or  black  to  attract  the  birds,  or  plums  blue.  Poison- 
ous berries  are  as  brilliant  as  harmless  ones.  No 
doubt  there  is  a  reason  for  all  these  high  colors, 
and  for  the  plain  ones,  if  we  could  only  find  it.  Of 
course,  food,  environment,  climate,  have  much  to 
do  with  it  all. 

Probably,  if  we  could  compare  the  food  which 
our  grouse  eats  with  that  which  the  brilliant  pheas- 
ants of  the  East  eat,  or  the  food  of  our  wild  turkey 
with  that  of  the  Central  American  bird,  or  of  our 
pigeons  with  those  of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  we 
might  hit  upon  some  clue  to  their  difference  of  colo- 
ration. The  strange  and  bizarre  colors  and  forms 
of  the  birds  of  Africa  compared  with  those  of  North 
America  or  of  Europe  may  be  a  matter  of  food.  Why 
our  flicker  is  brighter  colored  than  our  other  wood- 
peckers may  be  on  account  of  the  ants  he  eats. 

Mr.  Wallace  in  one  of  his  essays  points  out  the 

effect  of  locality  on  color,  many  species  of  unrelated 

genera  both  among  insects  and  among  birds  being 

marked  similarly,  with  white  or  yellow  or  black, 

59 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

as  if  from  the  effect  of  some  fashion  that  has  spread 
among  them.  In  the  Philippine  Islands  metallic  hues 
are  the  fashion;  in  some  other  islands  very  light 
tints  are  in  vogue ;  in  still  other  localities  unrelated 
species  favor  crimson  or  blue.  Mr.  Wallace  says  that 
among  the  various  butterflies  of  different  countries 
this  preference  for  certain  colors  is  as  marked  as  it 
would  be  if  the  hares,  marmots,  and  squirrels  of 
Europe  were  all  red  with  black  feet,  while  the  cor- 
responding species  of  Central  Asia  were  all  yellow 
with  black  heads,  or  as  it  would  be  if  our  smaller 
mammals,  the  coon,  the  possum,  the  squirrels,  all 
copied  the  black  and  white  of  the  skunk.  The  reason 
for  all  this  is  not  apparent,  though  Wallace  thinks 
that  some  quality  of  the  soil  which  affects  the  food 
may  be  the  cause.  It  is  like  the  caprice  of  fashion. 
In  fact,  the  exaggerated  plumes,  fantastic  colors, 
and  monstrous  beaks  of  many  birds  in  both  hemi- 
spheres have  as  little  apparent  utility,  and  seem 
to  be  quite  as  much  the  result  of  caprice,  as  are  any 
of  the  extreme  fashions  in  dress  among  human 
beings. 

Our  red-shouldered  starlings  flock  in  the  fall,  and 
they  are  not  protectively  colored,  but  the  bobolinks, 
which  also  flock  at  the  same  time,  do  then  assume 
neutral  tints.  Why  the  change  in  the  one  case  and  not 
in  the  other,  since  both  species  feed  in  the  brown 
marshes  ?  Most  of  our  own  ground  birds  are  more 
or  less  ground-colored ;  but  here  on  the  ground,  amid 
60 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

the  bushes,  with  the  brown  oven-bird  and  the  brown 
thrasher,  is  the  chewink  with  conspicuous  mark- 
ings of  white  and  black  and  red.  Here  are  some 
of  the  soft  gray  and  brown  tinted  warblers  nesting 
on  the  ground,  and  here  is  the  more  conspicuous 
striped  black  and  white  creeping  warbler  nesting 
by  their  side.  Behold  the  rather  dull-colored  great 
crested  flycatcher  concealing  its  nest  in  a  hollow 
limb,  and  its  congener  the  brighter-feathered  king- 
bird building  its  nest  openly  on  the  branch  above. 

Hence,  whatever  truth  there  may  be  in  this  theory 
of  protective  coloration,  one  has  only  to  look  about 
him  to  discover  that  it  is  a  matter  which  Nature 
does  not  have  very  much  at  heart.  She  plays  fast 
and  loose  with  it  on  every  hand.  Now  she  seems  to 
set  great  store  by  it,  the  next  moment  she  discards 
it  entirely. 

If  dull  colors  are  protective,  then  bright  colors 
are  non-protective  or  dangerous,  and  one  wonders 
why  all  birds  of  gay  feather  have  not  been  cut  off 
and  the  species  exterminated:  or  why,  in  cases 
where  the  males  are  bright-colored  and  the  females 
of  neutral  tints,  as  with  our  scarlet  tanager  and 
indigo-bird,  the  females  are  not  greatly  in  excess  of 
the  males,  which  does  not  seem  to  be  the  case. 

ii 

We  arrive  at  the  idea  that  neutral  tints  are  pro- 
tective from  the  point  of  view  of  the  human  eye. 
61 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

Now  if  all  animals  that  prey  upon  others  were 
guided  by  the  eye  alone,  there  would  be  much  more 
in  the  theory  than  there  is.  But  none  of  the  preda- 
ceous  four-footed  beasts  depend  entirely  upon  the 
eye.  The  cat  tribe  does  to  a  certain  extent,  but  these 
creatures  stalk  or  waylay  moving  game,  and  the 
color  does  not  count.  A  white  hare  will  evidently 
fall  a  prey  to  a  lynx  or  a  cougar  in  our  winter  woods 
as  easily  as  a  brown  rabbit;  and  will  not  a  desert- 
colored  animal  fall  a  prey  to  a  lion  or  a  tiger  just 
as  readily  as  it  would  if  it  were  white  or  black? 
Then  the  most  destructive  tribes  of  all,  the  wolves, 
the  foxes,  the  minks,  the  weasels,  the  skunks,  the 
coons,  and  the  like,  depend  entirely  upon  scent. 
The  eye  plays  a  very  insignificant  part  in  their 
hunting,  hence  again  the  question  of  color  is  elimi- 
nated. 

Birds  of  prey  depend  upon  the  eye,  but  they  are 
also  protectively  colored,  and  their  eyes  are  so  pre- 
ternaturally  sharp  that  no  disguise  of  assimilative 
tints  is  of  any  avail  against  them.  If  both  the 
hunted  and  its  hunter  are  concealed  by  their  neutral 
tints,  of  what  advantage  is  it  to  either?  If  the 
brown  bird  is  hidden  from  the  brown  hawk,  and 
vice  versa,  then  are  they  on  an  equal  footing  in  this 
respect,  and  the  victory  is  to  the  sharpest-eyed. 
If,  as  is  doubtless  the  case,  the  eye  of  the  hawk 
sharpens  as  the  problem  of  his  existence  becomes 
more  difficult,  then  is  the  game  even,  and  the  quarry 
62 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

has  no  advantage  —  the  protective  color  does  not 
protect. 

Why  should  the  owl,  which  hunts  by  night,  be 
colored  like  the  hawk  that  hunts  by  day?  If 
the  owl  were  red,  or  blue,  or  green,  or  black,  or 
white,  would  it  not  stand  just  as  good  a  chance  of 
obtaining  a  subsistence  ?  Its  silent  flight,  its  keen- 
ness of  vision,  and  the  general  obscurity  are  the 
main  matters.  At  night  color  is  almost  neutralized. 
Would  not  the  lynx  and  the  bobcat  fare  just  as  well 
if  they  were  of  the  hue  of  the  sable  or  the  mink? 
Are  their  neutral  grays  or  browns  any  advantage  to 
them?  The  gray  fox  is  more  protectively  colored 
than  the  red ;  is  he  therefore  more  abundant  ?  Far 
from  it;  just  the  reverse  is  true.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  the  red  and  the  gray  squirrels. 

The  northern  hare,  which  changes  to  white  in 
winter,  would  seem  to  have  an  advantage  over  the 
little  gray  rabbit,  which  is  as  conspicuous  upon 
the  snow  as  a  brown  leaf,  and  yet  such  does  not 
seem  to  be  the  case.  It  is  true  that  the  rabbit  often 
passes  the  day  in  holes  and  beneath  rocks,  and 
the  hare  does  not;  but  it  is  only  at  night  that  the 
natural  enemies  of  each  —  foxes,  minks,  weasels, 
wildcats,  owls  —  are  abroad. 

It  is  thought  by  Wallace  and  others  that  the 

skunk  is  strikingly  marked  as  a  danger  signal,  its 

contrast  of  black  and  white  warning  all  creatures 

to  pass  by  on  the  other  side.    But  the  magpie  is 

63 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

marked  in  much  the  same  way,  as  is  also  our 
bobolink,  which,  in  some  localities,  is  called  "  the 
skunk-bird,"  and  neither  of  these  birds  has  any 
such  reason  to  advertise  itself  as  has  the  skunk. 
Then  here  is  the  porcupine,  with  its  panoply  of 
spears,  as  protectively  colored  as  the  coon  or  the 
woodchuck,  —  why  does  not  it  have  warning  colors 
also  ?  The  enemy  that  attacks  it  fares  much  worse 
than  in  the  case  of  its  black  and  white  neighbor. 

The  ptarmigan  is  often  cited  as  a  good  illustra- 
tion of  the  value  of  protective  coloration,  —  white 
in  winter,  particolored  in  spring,  and  brown  in 
summer,  —  always  in  color  blending  with  its  envi- 
ronment. But  the  Arctic  fox  would  not  be  baffled 
by  its  color;  it  goes  by  scent;  and  the  great  snowy 
owl  would  probably  see  it  in  the  open  at  any  time 
of  year.  On  islands  in  Bering  Sea  we  saw  the  Arctic 
snowbird  in  midsummer,  white  as  a  snowflake,  and 
visible  afar.  Our  northern  grouse  carry  their  gray 
and  brown  tints  through  our  winters,  and  do  not 
appear  to  suffer  unduly  from  their  telltale  plumage. 
If  the  cold  were  as  severe  as  it  is  farther  north, 
doubtless  they,  too,  would  don  white  coats,  for  the 
extreme  cold  seems  to  play  an  important  part  in 
this  matter,  —  this  and  the  long  Arctic  nights.  Sir 
John  Ross  protected  a  Hudson's  Bay  lemming  from 
the  low  temperature  by  keeping  it  in  his  cabin,  and 
the  animal  retained  its  summer  coat;  but  when  he 
exposed  it  to  a  temperature  of  thirty  degrees  below 
64 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

zero,  it  began  to  change  to  white  in  a  single  night, 
and  at  the  end  of  a  week  was  almost  entirely  so. 
It  is  said  that  in  Siberia  domestic  cattle  and  horses 
become  lighter-colored  in  the  winter,  and  Darwin 
says  he  has  known  brown  ponies  in  England  to 
become  white  during  the  same  season. 

Only  one  of  our  weasels,  the  ermine,  becomes 
white  in  winter;  the  others  keep  their  brown  coats 
through  the  year.  Is  this  adaptive  color  any  ad- 
vantage to  the  ermine  ?  and  are  the  other  weasels 
handicapped  by  their  brown  tints  ? 

The  marten,  the  sable,  and  the  fisher  do  not  turn 
white  in  the  cold  season,  nor  the  musk  ox,  nor  the 
reindeer.  The  latter  animals  are  gregarious,  and 
the  social  spirit  seems  to  oppose  local  color. 

Apart  from  the  intense  cold,  the  long  Arctic 
nights  no  doubt  have  much  to  do  with  the  white  of 
Arctic  animals.  "  Absence  of  light  leads  to  diminu- 
tion or  even  total  abolition  of  pigmentation,  while 
its  presence  leads  to  an  increase  in  some  degree 
proportionate  to  the  intensity  of  the  light."1 

When  the  variable  northern  hare  is  removed  to 
a  milder  climate,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  it 
ceases  to  turn  white  in  winter. 

The  more  local  an  animal  is,  the  more  does  it 

incline  to  take  on  the  colors  of  its  surroundings, 

as  may  be  seen  in  the  case  of  the  toads,  the  frogs, 

the  snakes,  and  many  insects.    It  seems  reasonable 

1  Vernon  on  Variation  in  Animals  and  Plants. 

65 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

that  the  influence  of  the  environment  should  be 
more  potent  in  such  cases.  The  grasshoppers  in 
the  fields  are  of  all  shades  of  green  and  brown  and 
gray,  but  is  it  probable  that  these  tints  ever  hide 
them  from  their  natural  enemies  —  the  sharp-eyed 
birds  and  fowls?  A  grasshopper  gives  itself  away 
when  it  hops,  and  it  always  hops.  On  the  sea- 
coast  I  noticed  that  the  grasshoppers  were  gray  like 
the  sands.  What  fed  upon  them,  if  anything,  I 
could  not  find  out,  but  their  incessant  hopping 
showed  how  little  they  sought  concealment.  The 
nocturnal  enemies  of  grasshoppers,  such  as  coons 
and  skunks,  are  probably  not  baffled  at  all  by  their 
assimilative  colors. 

Our  wood-frog  (Rana  sylvatica)  is  found  through- 
out the  summer  on  the  dry  leaves  in  the  woods,  and 
it  is  red  like  them.  When  it  buries  itself  in  the  leaf 
mould  in  the  fall  for  its  winter  sleep,  it  turns  dark 
like  the  color  of  the  element  in  which  it  is  buried. 
Can  this  last  change  be  for  protection  also?  No 
enemy  sees  it  or  disturbs  it  in  that  position,  and 
yet  it  is  as  "protectively"  colored  as  in  summer. 
This  is  the  stamp  of  the  environment  again. 

The  toad  is  of  the  color  of  the  ground  where  he 
fumbles  along  in  the  twilight  or  squats  by  day,  and 
yet,  I  fancy,  his  enemy  the  snake  finds  him  out 
without  difficulty.  He  is  of  the  color  of  the  earth 
because  he  is  of  the  earth  earthy,  and  the  bullfrog 
is  of  the  color  of  his  element,  —  but  there  are  the 
66 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

little  green  frog,  and  the  leopard  frog,  and  the  pick- 
erel frog,  all  quite  showily  marked.  So  there  we 
are,  trying  to  tabulate  Nature  when  she  will  not 
be  tabulated!  Whether  it  be  the  phrase  " protective 
coloration,"  or  the  imprint  of  the  environment,  with 
which  we  seek  to  capture  her,  she  will  not  always 
be  captured.  In  the  tropics  there  are  gaudily 
colored  tree-frogs,  —  blue,  yellow,  striped,  —  frogs 
with  red  bodies  and  blue  legs,  and  these  showy 
creatures  are  never  preyed  upon,  they  are  uneat- 
able. But  the  old  question  comes  up  again  —  are 
the  colors  to  advertise  their  uneatableness,  or  are 
they  the  necessary  outcome,  and  would  they  be  the 
same  in  a  world  where  no  living  thing  was  preyed 
upon  by  another  ?  The  acids  or  juices  that  make 
their  flesh  unpalatable  may  be  the  same  that  pro- 
duce the  bright  colors.  To  confound  the  cause  with 
the  effect  is  a  common  error.  I  doubt  if  the  high 
color  of  some  poisonous  mushrooms  is  a  warning 
color,  or  has  any  reference  to  outward  conditions. 
The  poison  and  the  color  are  probably  inseparable. 
The  muskrat's  color  blends  him  with  his  sur- 
roundings, and  yet  his  enemies,  the  mink,  the  fox, 
the  weasel,  trail  him  just  the  same;  his  color  does 
not  avail.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  wood  chuck. 
What  color  could  he  be  but  earth  color?  and  yet 
the  wolf  and  the  fox  easily  smell  him  out.  If  he 
were  snow-white  or  jet-black  (as  he  sometimes  is), 
he  would  be  in  no  greater  danger. 
67 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

I  think  it  highly  probable  that  our  bluebird  is  a 
descendant  of  a  thrush.  The  speckled  breast  of  the 
young  bird  indicates  this,  as  does  a  thrush-like 
note  which  one  may  occasionally  hear  from  it.  The 
bird  departed  from  the  protective  livery  of  the 
thrush  and  came  down  its  long  line  of  descent  in 
a  showy  coat  of  blue,  and  yet  got  on  just  as  well  as 
its  ancestors.  Gay  plumes  were  certainly  no  handi- 
cap in  this  case.  Are  they  in  any  case  ?  I  seriously 
doubt  it.  In  fact,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  if  the 
birds  and  the  mammals  of  the  earth  had  been  of  all 
the  colors  of  the  rainbow,  they  would  be  just  about 
as  numerous. 

The  fact  that  this  assimilative  coloring  disap- 
pears in  the  case  of  animals  under  domestication, 
—  that  the  neutral  grays  and  browns  are  followed  by 
white  and  black  and  particolored  animals,  —  what 
does  that  prove?  It  proves  only  that  the  order  of 
Nature  has  been  interfered  with,  and  that  as  wild 
instinct  becomes  demoralized  under  domestication, 
so  does  the  wild  coloration  of  animals.  The  con- 
ditions are  changed,  numberless  new  influences  are 
brought  to  bear,  the  food  is  changed  and  is  of 
greater  variety,  climatic  influences  are  interfered 
with,  multitudes  of  new  and  strange  impressions 
are  made  upon  each  individual  animal,  and  Nature 
abandons  her  uniformity  of  coloration  and  becomes 
reckless,  so  to  speak,  not  because  the  pressure  of 
danger  is  removed,  but  because  the  danger  is  of  a 
68 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

new  and  incalculable  kind  —  the  danger  from  man 
and  artificial  conditions.  Man  demoralizes  Nature 
whenever  he  touches  her,  in  savage  tribes  and  in 
animal  life,  as  well  as  in  the  fields  and  woods.  He 
makes  sharp  contrasts  wherever  he  goes,  in  forms, 
in  colors,  in  sounds,  in  odors,  and  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  animals  brought  under  his  in- 
fluence come  in  time  to  show,  more  or  less,  these 
contrasts.  The  tendency  to  variation  is  stimulated; 
form  as  well  as  color  is  rapidly  modified;  the  old 
order  is  broken  up,  and  the  animal  comes  to  partake 
more  or  less  of  the  bizarre  condition  that  surrounds 
it.  Nature  when  left  to  herself  is  harmonious; 
man  makes  discords,  or  harmony  of  another  order. 
The  instincts  of  wild  animals  are  much  more  keen 
and  invariable  than  are  those  of  animals  in  do- 
mestication, the  conditions  of  their  lives  being  far 
more  rigid  and  exacting.  Remove  the  eggs  from  a 
wild  bird's  nest  and  she  instantly  deserts  it;  but 
a  domestic  fowl  will  incubate  an  empty  nest  for 
days.  For  the  same  reason  the  colors  of  animals 
in  domestication  are  less  constant  than  in  the 
wild  state;  they  break  up  and  become  much  more 
bizarre  and  capricious. 

Cultivated  plants  depart  more  from  a  fixed  type 
than  do  plants  of  the  fields  and  the  woods.  See 
what  outre  forms  and  colors  the  cultivated  flowers 
display! 

The  pressure  of  fear  is  of  course  much  greater 
69 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

upon  the  wild  creatures  than  upon  the  tame,  but 
that  the  removal  or  the  modification  of  this  should 
cause  them  to  lose  their  neutral  tints  is  not  credible. 
The  domestic  pigeons  and  the  barnyard  fowls  are 
almost  as  much  exposed  to  their  arch  enemy,  the 
hawk,  as  is  the  wild  pigeon  or  the  jungle  fowl,  if 
not  more,  since  the  wild  birds  are  free  to  rush  to  the 
cover  of  the  trees  and  woods.  And  how  ceaseless 
their  vigilance !  what  keen  eyes  they  have  for  hawks, 
whether  they  circle  in  the  air  or  walk  about  in  the 
near  fields!  In  fact,  the  instinct  of  fear  of  some 
enemy  in  the  air  above  has  apparently  not  been 
diminished  in  the  barnyard  fowls  by  countless  gen- 
erations of  domestication.  Let  a  boy  shy  a  rusty 
pie-tin  or  his  old  straw  hat  across  the  henyard,  and 
behold  what  a  screaming  and  a  rushing  to  cover 
there  is !  This  ever  watchful  fear  on  the  part  of 
the  domestic  fowls  ought  to  have  had  some  effect 
in  preserving  their  neutral  tints,  but  it  has  not.  A 
stronger  influence  has  come  from  man's  disrupture 
of  natural  relations. 

Why  are  ducks  more  variously  and  more  bril- 
liantly colored  than  geese  ?  I  think  it  would  be  hard 
to  name  the  reason.  A  duck  seems  of  a  more  intense 
nature  than  a  goose,  more  active,  more  venturesome; 
it  takes  to  the  bypaths,  as  it  were,  while  the  goose 
keeps  to  a  few  great  open  highways;  its  range  is 
wider,  its  food  supply  is  probably  more  various, 
and  hence  it  has  greater  adaptiveness  and  variabil- 
70 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

ity.  The  swan  is  still  more  restricted  in  its  range 
and  numbers  than  the  goose,  and,  in  our  hemi- 
sphere, is  snow-white.  The  factor  of  protective  col- 
oration, so  pronounced  in  the  case  of  the  goose,  is 
quite  ignored  in  the  swan.  Neither  the  goose  nor 
the  swan,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  any  winged  enemies, 
but  their  eggs  and  young  are  doubtless  in  danger 
at  times  from  foxes  and  wolves  and  water  animals. 
The  duck  must  have  more  enemies,  because  it  is 
smaller,  and  is  found  in  more  diverse  and  sundry 
places.  Upon  the  principle  that  like  begets  like, 
that  variety  breeds  variety,  one  would  expect  the 
ducks  to  be  more  brightly  and  variously  colored 
than  their  larger  congeners,  the  geese  and  the 
swans. 

The  favorite  notion  of  some  writers  on  natural 
history,  that  it  is  a  protective  device  when  animals 
are  rendered  less  conspicuous  by  being  light  be- 
neath and  dark  above,  seems  to  me  a  hasty  con- 
clusion. This  gradation  in  shading  is  an  inevitable 
result  of  certain  fixed  principles.  It  applies  to  in- 
animate objects  also.  The  apples  on  the  tree  and 
the  melons  in  the  garden  are  protectively  shaded 
in  the  same  way;  they  are  all  lighter  beneath 
and  deeper-colored  above.  The  mushrooms  on 
the  stumps  and  trees  are  brown  above  and  white 
beneath.  Where  the  light  is  feeblest  the  color  is 
lightest,  and  vice  versa.  The  under  side  of  a  bird's 
wing  is,  as  a  rule,  lighter  than  the  top  side.  The 
71 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

stronger  the  light,  the  more  the  pigments  are  devel- 
oped. All  fish  that  I  am  acquainted  with  are  light 
beneath  and  dark  above.  If  this  condition  helps 
to  conceal  them  from  their  enemies,  it  is  merely 
incidental,  and  not  the  result  of  laws  working  to 

that  end. 

in 

"  The  danger  of  the  mother  bird  during  incuba- 
tion "  is  a  phrase  often  used  by  Darwin  and  by  more 
recent  writers.  This  danger  is  the  chief  reason  as- 
signed for  the  more  obscure  coloring  of  the  female 
among  so  many  species.  Now  it  would  seem  that  the 
dangers  of  the  mother  bird  during  incubation  ought 
to  be  far  less  than  those  of  her  more  brilliantly  col- 
ored mate,  flitting  from  tree  to  tree  and  advertising 
his  whereabouts  by  his  calls  and  song,  or  absorbed 
in  procuring  his  food ;  or  than  those  of  other  females, 
flying  about  exposed  to  the  eye  of  every  passing 
hawk.  The  life  of  most  wild  creatures  is  like  that 
of  a  people  engaged  in  war:  enemies  lurk  on  every 
hand,  and  the  danger  to  the  sitting  bird  may  be 
compared  in  degree  to  that  of  the  wife  rocking  the 
cradle  by  her  fireside;  while  her  roving  mate  must 
face  perils  equal  to  those  of  a  soldier  on  a  cam- 
paign. The  mother  bird  is  generally  well  hidden, 
and  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  use  her  eyes  and  ears, 
and  she  usually  does  this  to  good  purpose.  Indeed, 
I  believe  the  sitting  bird  is  rarely  destroyed.  I 
have  never  known  it  to  happen,  though  this  fact 
72 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

does  not  prove  very  much.  The  peril  is  to  the  eggs 
or  to  the  unfledged  young;  these  cannot  run  or  fly 
away.  Eliminate  this  danger  —  this  and  the  danger 
from  storms  and  cold  —  and  the  numbers  of  our 
birds  would  probably  double  in  a  single  year.  Hence 
the  care  the  birds  take  to  conceal  their  nests,  not 
for  the  mother  bird's  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
treasures  which  she  cannot  defend.  In  some  cases 
she  appears  to  offer  herself  an  easy  victim  in  order 
to  lure  the  intruder  away.  She  would  have  him  see 
only  herself  when  she  flutters,  apparently  disabled, 
over  the  ground.  The  game  of  concealment  has 
failed;  now  she  will  try  what  feigning  can  do. 

All  the  species  of  our  birds  in  which  the  male 
is  more  brilliantly  colored  than  the  female,  such 
as  the  scarlet  tanager,  the  indigo-bird,  the  rose- 
breasted  grosbeak,  the  goldfinch,  the  summer 
tanager,  the  Virginia  cardinal,  the  blue  grosbeak, 
build  in  trees  or  low  bushes,  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  dull  tints  of  the  female  would  play  but 
little  part  in  concealing  the  nest.  The  enemies 
of  these  birds  —  as  of  most  of  our  birds  —  are 
crows,  squirrels,  black  snakes,  jays,  weasels,  owls, 
and  hawks,  and  have  been  for  untold  generations. 
Now  the  obscure  coloring  of  the  female  would  play 
no  part  in  protecting  her  against  any  of  these  crea- 
tures. What  would  attract  their  attention  would 
be  the  nest  itself.  The  crows,  the  jays,  the  weasels, 
the  squirrels,  explore  the  trees  looking  for  eggs  and 
73 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

young  birds,  as  doubtless  the  owls  do  by  night. 
The  mother  bird  flies  at  their  approach,  and  leaves 
her  eggs  or  young  to  be  devoured.  The  sitting  bird 
usually  is  not  visible  to  an  enemy  passing  in  the  air 
above,  as  she  is  hidden  by  the  leaves.  In  the  care 
of  the  young  the  male  is  as  active  and  as  much  ex- 
posed to  danger  as  is  the  female,  and  in  the  case  of 
the  scarlet  tanager  the  male  seems  the  bolder  and 
the  more  active  of  the  two;  yet  the  female,  because 
of  her  obscure  coloring,  could  afford  to  run  many 
more  chances  than  he. 

With  the  ground-builders  the  case  is  not  much 
different.  These  birds  are  preyed  upon  by  prowlers, 
—  skunks,  weasels,  rats,  snakes,  crows,  minks, 
foxes,  and  cats,  —  enemies  that  hunt  at  close 
range  by  night  and  by  day,  and  that  search  the 
ground  by  sight  and  by  smell.  It  is  not  the  parent 
bird,  but  the  eggs  and  the  young,  that  they  capture. 
Indeed,  I  cannot  see  that  the  color  of  the  sitting 
bird  enters  into  the  problem  at  all.  Red  or  white 
or  blue  would  not  endanger  the  nest  any  more  than 
would  the  neutral  grays  and  browns.  The  bobolink 
builds  in  meadows  where  the  grass  alone  conceals 
it.  That  the  back  of  the  sitting  bird  harmonizes 
perfectly  with  the  meadow  bottom  might  make  a 
difference  to  the  egg-collector,  or  to  an  eye  a  few  feet 
above,  but  not  to  the  mink,  or  the  skunk,  or  the  snake, 
or  the  fox,  that  came  nosing  about  the  very  spot. 

Last  summer  I  saw  where  a  woodcock  had  made 
74 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

her  nest  in  a  dry,  grassy  field  many  yards  from  a 
swamp  in  the  woods,  which  was  her  natural  habitat. 
The  instinct  of  the  bird  seemed  to  tell  her  that  she 
would  be  less  exposed  to  her  prowling  enemies  in 
the  dry,  open  field  than  in  the  thick,  swampy  woods, 
and  her  instinct  was,  no  doubt,  a  safe  guide.  Her 
imitative  color  would  avail  her  but  little  in  either 
place.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  quail  and  of 
the  grouse.  Their  neutral  tints  may  protect  them 
from  the  human  eye,  but  not  from  their  natural 
enemies.  Could  the  coon,  or  the  mink,  or  the  fox, 
or  the  skunk  be  baffled  by  them  ?  Is  the  setter  or 
pointer  baffled  ?  Both  the  quail  and  the  partridge, 
in  settled  countries,  are  very  likely  to  nest  along 
roads  and  paths,  away  from  thick  jungles  and 
tangles  that  would  afford  cover  to  their  enemies.  It 
is  their  eggs  and  their  newly  hatched  young  that 
they  are  solicitous  about.  Their  wings  afford  se- 
curity to  themselves.  True,  the  sitting  bird  usually 
allows  the  passer-by  to  approach  her  very  closely, 
but  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  she  is  much  sooner 
alarmed  by  an  animal  that  approaches  stealthily, 
nosing  about,  making  very  little  noise,  than  by  the 
passing  of  a  person  or  of  the  large  grazing  animals. 
Her  old  traditional  enemies  are  stealthy  and  subtle, 
and  her  instinct  keeps  her  on  her  guard  against 
them.  A  person  walking  boldly  along,  occupied 
about  his  own  business,  can  pass  within  a  few  feet  of 
a  partridge  on  his  drumming  log.  But  let  a  man  try 
75 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

to  creep  up  on  the  drumming  partridge,  and  the  bird 
will  instantly  show  how  wary  and  suspicious  he  is. 

The  female  cowbird  is  much  duller  in  color  than 
the  male,  and  yet  she  is  a  parasitical  bird,  and  does 
no  incubating  at  all.  With  the  rose-breasted  gros- 
beak, the  male  seems  to  do  his  share  of  the  incu- 
bating, and  has  been  heard  to  sing  upon  the  nest. 

A  fact  that  seems  to  tell  against  the  notions  I 
have  been  advancing,  and  that  gives  support  to  the 
theory  of  the  protective  value  of  dull  colors,  is  the 
fact  that  with  those  species  of  birds  in  which  both 
sexes  are  brightly  colored,  the  nest  is  usually  placed 
in  a  hole,  or  is  domed,  thus  concealing  the  sitting 
bird.  This  is  true  of  a  large  number  of  species, 
as  the  bluebird,  the  woodpeckers,  the  chickadee, 
the  nuthatch,  the  kingfisher,  and,  in  the  tropics,  the 
various  species  of  parrots  and  parrakeets  and  many 
others,  all  birds  of  brilliant  plumage,  the  sexes  being 
in  each  case  indistinguishable.  But  there  are  such 
marked  exceptions  to  this  rule  that,  it  seems  to  me, 
its  force  is  greatly  weakened.  Our  blue  jay  is  a 
highly  colored  bird,  and  yet  it  builds  an  open  nest. 
The  crow  builds  an  open  nest.  The  passenger 
pigeon  was  a  bird  of  rather  showy  colors,  and  the 
male  did  his  share  of  the  incubating,  still  the  nest 
was  built  openly.  The  shrike  is  a  conspicuously 
marked  bird,  and  it  builds  an  open  nest.  Mr. 
Wallace  names  four  other  brilliant  Old- World 
birds  that  build  open  nests.  Then  there  are  several 
76 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

species  of  birds,  in  which  the  female  is  obscurely 
marked,  that  build  in  holes  and  cavities,  such  as  our 
wrens,  the  great  crested  flycatcher,  the  European 
starling,  the  English  sparrow,  the  bush-tits  of  Cal- 
ifornia, and  the  wood  duck.  The  female  oriole  is 
much  duller-colored  than  her  mate,  yet  she  builds 
a  pocket  nest.  Of  course  these  last  cases  do  not 
prove  that  there  is  not  greater  safety  in  a  hidden 
nest,  they  only  show  that  the  color  of  the  mother 
bird  is  not  the  main  factor  in  the  problem.  But 
that  a  bird  in  a  hole  is  safer  than  a  bird  in  an  open 
nest  may  well  be  doubted.  The  eggs  are  probably 
more  secure  from  the  thievish  crow  and  the  blue 
jay,  but  not  from  rats  and  squirrels  and  weasels. 
I  know  that  the  nests  of  the  bluebird  and  the  chick- 
adee are  often  broken  up  by  some  small  enemy. 

We  fancy  that  the  birds  are  guided  by  their 
instinct  for  protective  colors  in  the  materials  they 
choose  for  their  nests.  Most  birds  certainly  aim 
to  conceal  their  nests  —  the  solitary  builders,  but 
not  those  that  nest  in  communities,  like  the  cliff 
swallows  and  rooks  and  flamingoes  —  and  the 
materials  they  use  favor  this  concealment.  But 
what  other  materials  could  they  use  ?  They  choose 
the  material  everywhere  near  at  hand,  —  moss, 
leaves,  dry  grass,  twigs,  mud,  and  the  like.  The 
ground-builders  scrape  together  a  few  dry  straws 
and  spears  of  grass;  the  tree-builders,  twigs  and 
lichens  and  cotton  and  rootlets  and  other  dry  wood 
77 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

products.  There  is  nothing  else  for  them  to  use. 
If  a  man  builds  a  hut  or  a  shanty  in  the  fields  or 
woods  with  such  material  as  he  finds  ready  at  hand, 
his  habitation  will  be  protectively  colored  also. 
The  winter  wren  builds  its  mouse-like  nest  of  green 
moss,  but  in  every  case  that  has  come  under  my 
observation  the  nest  has  been  absolutely  hidden 
by  its  position  under  a  log  or  in  a  stump,  or  amid 
the  roots  of  trees,  and  the  most  conspicuous  colors 
would  not  have  betrayed  it  to  its  enemies.  In  fact, 
the  birds  that  build  hidden  nests  in  holes  or  tree 
cavities  use  of  necessity  the  same  neutral  materials 
as  those  that  build  openly. 

Birds  that  deliberately  face  the  exterior  of  their 
nests  with  lichens  obtained  from  rocks  and  trees, 
such  as  the  hummingbird,  the  blue-gray  gnat- 
catcher,  and  the  wood  pewee,  can  hardly  do  so 
with  a  view  to  protection,  because  the  material  of 
their  nests  is  already  weather-worn  and  inconspicu- 
ous. The  lichens  certainly  give  the  nest  an  artistic 
finish  and  make  it  a  part  of  the  branch  upon  which 
it  is  placed,  to  an  extent  that  suggests  something 
like  taste  in  the  builders.  But  I  fail  to  see  how  a 
marauding  crow,  or  a  jay,  or  a  squirrel,  or  a  weasel, 
or  any  other  enemy  of  the  bird  could  be  cheated  by 
this  device. 

IV 

I  find  myself  less  inclined  to  look  upon  the  neutral 
grays  and  browns  of  the  animal  world  as  the  result 
78 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

of  the  struggle  for  existence,  but  more  disposed  to 
regard  them  as  the  result  of  the  same  law  or  tend- 
ency that  makes  nature  in  general  adaptive  and 
harmonious  —  the  outcome  of  the  blendings,  the 
adjustments,  the  unifying  processes  or  tendencies 
that  are  seen  and  felt  all  about  us.  Is  not  open-air 
nature  ever  striving  toward  a  deeper  harmony  and 
unity?  Do  not  differences,  discrepancies,  antago- 
nisms, tend  to  disappear?  Is  there  not  everywhere 
something  at  work  to  bring  about  agreements, 
correspondences,  adaptations?  to  tone  down  con- 
trasts, to  soften  outlines,  to  modify  the  abrupt,  to 
make  peace  between  opposites?  Is  not  the  very 
condition  of  life  and  well-being  involved  in  this 
principle  ?  The  abrupt,  the  disjoined,  the  irrecon- 
cilable, mean  strife  and  dissolution;  while  agree- 
ments, gradations,  easy  transitions,  mean  life  and 
growth.  Like  tends  to  beget  like;  the  hand  is  sub- 
dued to  the  element  it  works  in.  The  environment 
sets  its  stamp  more  or  less  strongly  upon  all  living 
things.  Even  the  pyramids  are  the  color  of  the 
sands.  Leave  your  bones  there,  and  they  will  soon 
be  of  the  same  tint.  Even  your  old  boots  or  old  coat 
will  in  time  come  to  blend  a  little  with  the  desert. 
The  tendency  in  nature  that  is  over  all  and 
under  all  is  the  tendency  or  effort  toward  harmony 
—  to  get  rid  of  strife,  discord,  violent  contrasts, 
and  to  adjust  every  creature  to  its  environment. 
Inside  of  this  great  law  or  tendency  are  the  lesser 
79 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

laws  of  change,  variety,  opposition,  contrast.  Life 
must  go  on,  and  life  for  the  moment  breaks  the 
unity,  the  balance.  May  not  what  is  called  pro- 
tective coloration  be  largely  this  stamp  of  the  en- 
vironment, this  tendency  to  oneness,  to  harmony 
and  simplicity,  that  pervades  nature,  organic  no 
less  than  inorganic? 

Things  in  nature  blend  and  harmonize;  one 
thing  matches  with  another.  All  open-air  objects 
tend  to  take  on  the  same  color- tones;  everything 
in  the  woods  becomes  woodsy,  things  upon  the 
shore  get  the  imprint  of  the  shore,  things  in  the 
water  assume  the  hues  of  the  water,  the  lichen 
matches  the  rock  and  the  trees,  the  shell  matches 
the  beach  and  the  waves;  everywhere  is  the  tend- 
ency to  unity  and  simplicity,  to  low  tones  and 
adaptive  colors. 

One  would  not  expect  animals  of  the  plains  or 
of  the  desert  to  be  colored  like  those  of  the  bush 
or  of  the  woods;  the  effects  of  the  strong  uniform 
light  in  the  one  case  and  of  the  broken  and  check- 
ered light  in  the  other  would  surely  result  in  differ- 
ent coloration.  That  never-ending  brown  or  gray 
or  white  should  not  in  time  stamp  itself  upon  the 
creatures  living  in  the  midst  of  them  is  incredible. 

Through  the  action  of  this  principle,  water  ani- 
mals will  be  water-colored,  the  fish  in  tropic  seas 
will  be  more  brilliantly  colored  than  those  in  north- 
ern seas,  tropical  birds  and  insects  will  be  of  gayer 
80 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

hues  than  those  of  the  temperate  zones,  shore  birds 
will  be  shore-tinted,  Arctic  life  will  blend  more  or 
less  with  Arctic  snows,  ground  animals  will  assimi- 
late to  the  ground  colors,  tree  animals  will  show 
greater  variety  in  tint  and  form,  plains  animals  will 
be  dull  of  hue  like  the  plains  —  all  this,  as  I  fancy, 
not  primarily  for  protection  or  concealment,  but 
through  the  law  of  natural  assimilation,  like  be- 
getting like,  variety  breeding  variety. 

What  more  natural  than  that  strictly  wood  birds 
should  be  of  many  colors  and  shades,  to  be  in  keep- 
ing with  their  surroundings?  Will  not  the  play  of 
light  and  shade,  the  multiplicity  of  forms,  and  the 
ever  moving  leaves  come  in  time  to  have  their  due 
effect  ?  Will  not  a  variety  of  influences  tend  to  pro- 
duce a  variety  of  results  ?  Will  not  sameness  breed 
sameness  ?  Would  not  one  expect  the  humming- 
birds to  be  more  brilliant  than  the  warblers,  and  the 
warblers  more  varied  in  color  than  the  finches  ? 
the  insect-feeders  than  the  seed -eaters  ?  The  hum- 
mingbirds are,  as  it  were,  begotten  by  the  flowers 
and  the  sunshine,  as  the  albatross  is  begotten  by 
the  sea,  and  the  whippoorwill  by  the  dusk.  The 
rat  will  not  be  as  bright  of  tint  as  the  squirrel,  nor 
the  rabbit  as  the  fox. 

In  the  spring  one  may  sometimes  see  a  bluebird, 

or  a  redbird,  or  a  bright  warbler  for  a  moment  upon 

the  ground.   How  artificial  and  accidental  it  looks, 

like  a  piece  of  ribbon  or  a  bit  of  millinery  dropped 

81 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

there!  It  is  not  one  with  the  ground,  it  is  not  at 
home  there.  In  the  tree  it  is  more  in  keeping  with 
the  changing  forms  and  the  sharper  contrasts. 

The  environment  is  potent  in  many  ways.  Every- 
thing is  modified  by  the  company  it  keeps.  Do  not 
the  quiet  tints  and  sounds  of  the  country  have  their 
effect  upon  the  health  and  character  of  the  dwellers 
there?  The  citizen  differs  in  look  and  manner 
from  the  countryman,  the  lawyer  from  the  preacher 
and  the  doctor,  the  seaman  from  the  landsman,  the 
hermit  from  the  cosmopolite.  There  is  the  rural 
dullness,  and  there  is  the  metropolitan  alertness. 
Local  color,  local  quality,  are  realities.  States, 
cities,  neighborhoods,  have  shades  of  difference  in 
speech  and  manner.  The  less  traveled  a  people 
are,  the  more  marked  these  differences  appear. 
The  more  a  man  stays  at  home,  the  more  the  stamp 
of  his  environment  is  upon  him.  The  more  limited 
the  range  of  an  animal,  the  more  it  is  modified  by 
its  immediate  surroundings.  Thus  the  loon  is  so 
much  of  a  water  bird  that  upon  the  land  it  can 
only  hobble,  and  the  swallow  is  so  much  a  creature 
of  the  air  that  its  feet  are  of  little  use  to  it.  Per- 
fect adaptability  usually  narrows  the  range,  as  the 
skater  is  at  home  only  upon  the  ice. 

Here  are  two  closely  related  birds  of  ours,  the 

oven-bird  and  the  water- thrush,  both  with  speckled 

breasts,  but  each  tinted  more  or  less  like  the  ground 

it  walks  upon,  the  one  like  the  dry  leaves,  the  other 

82 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

like  the  brook  stones  and  pond  margins.  The  law 
of  assimilation  and  of  local  color  has  done  its  per- 
fect work.  Were  the  two  birds  to  change  places, 
each  retaining  its  own  color,  I  do  not  believe  they 
would  be  in  any  more  jeopardy  than  they  are 
now. 

The  camel  is  of  a  uniform  gray  like  the  desert 
where  it  is  at  home,  while  the  camelopard,  or  giraffe, 
a  creature  of  the  trees,  is  dappled  or  spotted.  Is 
the  color  in  either  case  protective  ?  Against  what  ? 
Their  size  and  movements  would  disclose  them 
to  their  natural  enemies  wherever  they  were. 

The  lion  is  desert-colored  too.  Is  this  for  con- 
cealment from  its  prey?  But  it  is  said  that  horses 
and  oxen  scent  the  lion  long  before  they  can  see  him, 
as  doubtless  do  the  wild  desert  creatures  upon 
which  he  feeds.  Their  scent  would  surely  be  keener 
than  that  of  our  domesticated  animals,  and  to  cap- 
ture them  he  must  run  them  down  or  ambush  them 
where  the  wind  favors  him.  His  desert  color  is  the 
brand  of  his  environment.  If  his  home  were  the 
rocks  or  the  mountains,  his  color  would  certainly 
be  different.  Nothing  could  be  duller  or  more  neu- 
tral than  the  color  of  the  elephant,  and  surely  he  is 
not  hiding  from  any  natural  enemy,  or  stalking  any 
game. 

The  bright  colors  of  many  tropical  fish,  such  as 
the  angel-fish,  seem  only  a  reflection  of  the  bright 
element  in  which  they  live.  The  changing  brilliant 
83 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

hues  of  tropic  seas  are  expressed  in  the  animal  life 
in  them.  It  is  highly  improbable  that  this  is  for  pro- 
tection; it  is  the  law  of  assimilation  working  in  the 
deep.  All  life  in  the  tropics  is  marked  by  greater 
eccentricity  of  form  and  richness  of  coloring  than 
in  the  temperate  zones,  and  this  is  in  keeping  with 
the  above  principle. 


It  seems  to  me  that  the  question  that  enters  most 
deeply  into  the  life  problem  of  an  animal  is  the 
question  of  food  and  climate,  and  of  climate  only 
so  far  as  it  affects  the  food  supply.  Many  of  our 
migrating  birds  will  brave  our  northern  winters  if 
they  can  get  anything  to  eat.  A  few  years  ago  our 
bluebirds  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  continent  were 
fearfully  decimated  by  a  cold  wave  and  an  ice  storm 
in  the  South  that  cut  off  their  food  supply.  For  two 
or  three  years  rarely  was  a  bluebird  seen  in  those 
parts  of  the  country  where,  before  that  event,  they 
had  been  abundant.  Then  they  began  to  reappear, 
and  now,  it  seems  to  me,  there  are  more  blue- 
birds than  ever  before.  Evidently  their  bright 
colors  have  not  stood  in  the  way  of  their  increase. 
If  they  have  now  reached  their  limit,  it  is  because 
they  have  reached  the  limit  of  their  food  supply  and 
their  nesting-sites. 

How  abundant  are  the  robins  everywhere,  how 
noisy,  how  conspicuous !  I  do  not  doubt  in  the  least 
84 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

that  if,  retaining  the  same  habits,  they  were  scarlet, 
or  white,  or  indigo,  they  would  be  just  as  numerous 
as  they  are  now.  The  robin  is  a  wide,  free  feeder, 
boring  in  the  turf  for  grubs  and  worms  in  summer, 
and  taking  up  with  cedar  berries  and  hardback 
drupes  in  winter.  If  a  crop  of  locusts  come  in  cherry 
time,  he  will  spare  your  cherries.  If  a  drouth  drives 
the  angleworms  deep  into  the  ground  in  August, 
look  out  for  your  grapes.  The  robin  is  wonderfully 
adaptive.  If  he  does  not  find  a  tree  to  his  liking, 
he  will  nest  on  the  wall,  or  under  your  porch,  or 
even  on  the  ground.  His  colors  are  not  brilliant, 
but  the  secret  of  his  success  lies  in  his  courage,  his 
force  of  character,  so  to  speak,  and  his  adaptability. 
His  European  cousin,  the  blackbird,  is  less  pro- 
tectively colored,  but  is  of  similar  habits  and  dis- 
position, and  seems  to  thrive  equally  well.  Again, 
contrast  the  Baltimore  oriole  with  the  orchard 
oriole.  If  there  is  anything  in  protective  color,  the 
more  soberly  colored  bird  has  greatly  the  advantage, 
and  yet  the  more  brilliant  species  is  far  more  abun- 
dant. The  strong  contrast  of  black  and  orange 
which  the  brilliant  coats  present  does  not  seem  to 
have  lessened  their  wearers'  chances  of  survival. 
Their  pendent  nests,  beyond  the  reach  of  weasels 
and  squirrels  and  snakes  and  crows,  are  no  doubt 
greatly  in  their  favor,  but  still  more  so,  I  believe, 
are  their  feeding  habits.  Compared  with  the  orchard 
oriole,  they  are  miscellaneous  feeders;  insects  and 
85 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

fruit  and  even  green  peas  are  in  their  bill  of  fare. 
When  a  bird  like  the  orchard  oriole  is  restricted 
in  its  range,  it  is  quite  certain  that  its  food  supply 
is  equally  restricted. 

Of  birds  that  live  upon  tree-trunks,  here  are  two 
of  similar  habits,  one  protectively  colored  and  the 
other  not,  and  yet  the  one  that  is  of  bright  tints  is 
far  the  more  numerous.  I  refer  to  the  nuthatch  and 
the  brown  creeper.  The  creeper  is  so  near  the  color 
of  the  bark  of  the  trees  upon  which  it  feeds  that  one 
has  great  difficulty  in  seeing  it,  while  the  nuthatch 
in  its  uniform  of  black,  white,  and  blue,  contrasts 
strongly  with  its  surroundings.  The  creeper  works 
up  and  around  the  tree,  rarely  showing  anything 
but  its  bark-colored  back,  while  the  nuthatch  hops 
up  and  down  and  around  the  tree  with  head  lifted, 
constantly  exposing  its  white  throat  and  breast. 
But  the  nuthatch  is  the  better  feeder,  it  eats  nuts 
as  well  as  the  larvae  of  insects,  while  the  creeper 
seems  limited  to  a  minute  kind  of  food  which  it 
obtains  with  that  slender,  curved  bill.  It  can  probe, 
but  not  break,  with  this  instrument,  and  is  never 
seen  feeding  upon  the  ground,  like  the  nuthatch. 
I  am  bound  to  state,  however,  that  the  latter 
bird  has  another  advantage  over  the  demure  creeper, 
wrhich  may  offset  the  danger  that  might  come  to 
it  from  its  brighter  color  —  it  is  more  supple  and 
alert.  Its  contact  with  the  tree  is  like  that  of  the 
rocker  with  the  floor,  while  the  line  of  the  creeper's 
86 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

back  is  more  like  that  of  the  rocker  reversed;  it 
touches  head  and  tail,  and  has  far  less  freedom  of 
movement  than  has  the  nuthatch.  The  head  of  the 
latter  often  points  straight  out  from  the  tree,  and 
the  eye  takes  in  all  the  surroundings  to  an  extent 
that  the  creeper's  cannot. 

Of  course  it  is  not  safe  to  claim  that  one  can  al- 
ways put  his  finger  upon  the  exact  thing  that  makes 
one  species  of  birds  more  numerous  than  an  allied 
species;  the  conditions  of  all  animal  life  are  complex, 
and  involve  many  factors  more  or  less  obscure. 
In  the  present  case  I  am  only  trying  to  point  nut 
how  slight  a  part  color  seems  to  play  in  the  problem, 
and  how  prominent  a  part  food  plays.  Our  ruffed 
grouse  holds  its  own  against  the  gunners,  the  trap- 
pers, the  hard  winters,  and  all  its  numerous  natural 
enemies,  not,  I  think,  because  it  is  protectively  col- 
ored, but  because  it,  too,  is  a  miscellaneous  feeder, 
ranging  from  berries  and  insects  to  buds  and  leaves. 
The  quail  has  the  same  adaptive  coloring,  but  not 
the  same  range  of  food  supply,  and  hence  is  more 
easily  cut  off.  Birds  that  subsist  upon  a  great  variety 
of  foods,  no  matter  what  their  coloring,  apparently 
have  the  best  chance  of  surviving. 

VI 

There  seem  to  be  two  instincts  in  animal  life  that 
work  against  the  influence  of  environment  upon 
the  colors  of  animals,  or  the  tendency  in  Nature  to 
87 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

make  her  neutral  grays  and  browns  everywhere 
prevail  —  the  male  instinct  of  reproduction,  which 
is  major,  and  the  social  or  gregarious  instinct, 
which  is  minor,  but  which,  I  am  inclined  to  believe, 
has  its  effect. 

The  gregarious  birds  and  mammals  are  as  a  rule 
less  locally  colored  than  those  of  solitary  habits. 
Thus  the  more  gregarious  elk  and  antelope  and 
sheep  are  less  adaptively  colored  than  the  more 
solitary  deer.  The  buffalo  had  not  the  usual  color 
of  a  plains  animal;  the  individual  was  lost  in  the 
mass,  and  the  mass  darkened  the  earth.  The  musk 
ox  goes  in  herds  and  does  not  put  on  a  white  coat 
in  the  sub-Arctic  regions. 

Does  a  solitary  life  tend  to  beget  neutral  and  ob- 
scure tints  in  a  bird  or  beast  ?  The  flocking  birds 
nearly  all  tend  to  bright  colors,  at  least  brighter 
than  their  solitary  congeners.  The  passenger  pigeon 
furnished  a  good  example  near  at  hand.  Contrast 
its  bright  hues  with  those  of  the  more  recluse  turtle- 
dove. Most  of  our  blackbirds  have  a  strong  flocking 
instinct,  and  they  are  conspicuously  colored.  The 
sociability  of  the  cedar-birds  may  help  to  account 
for  their  crests,  their  banded  tails,  and  their  pure, 
fine  browns.  As  soon  as  any  of  the  ground  birds 
show  a  development  of  the  flocking  instinct,  their 
hues  become  more  noticeable,  as  is  the  case  with 
the  junco,  the  snow  bunting,  the  shore  lark,  and  the 
lark  bunting  of  the  West.  Among  the  tree  Fringil- 
88 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

lidos  the  same  tendency  may  be  noticed,  the  flocking 
crossbills,  pine  grosbeaks,  redpolls,  and  the  like, 
all  being  brighter  of  color  than  the  solitary  spar- 
rows. The  robin  is  the  most  social  of  our  thrushes, 
and  is  the  brightest-colored. 

In  the  tropics  the  parrots  and  parrakeets  and 
macaws  are  all  strikingly  colored,  and  are  all  very 
social.  Why  should  not  this  be  so  ?  Numbers  beget 
warmth  and  enthusiasm.  A  multitude  is  gay  of 
spirit.  It  is  always  more  noisy  and  hilarious,  more 
festive  and  playful,  than  are  single  individuals. 
Each  member  is  less  a  part  of  its  surroundings  and 
more  a  part  of  the  flock  or  the  herd.  Its  associations 
with  nature  are  less  intimate  than  with  its  own  kind. 
Sociability,  in  the  human  species,  tends  to  express 
itself  in  outward  symbols  and  decorations,  and  why 
may  not  the  brighter  colors  of  the  social  birds  be 
the  outward  expression  of  the  same  spirit  ? 

The  social  flamingo  does  not,  in  the  matter  of 
color,  seem  to  have  been  influenced  by  its  environ- 
ment at  all.  The  gregarious  instinct  is  evidently 
very  strong  in  the  species.  Mr.  Frank  M.  Chapman 
found  them  in  the  Bahamas  living  and  breeding 
in  great  colonies;  he  discovered  what  he  calls  a 
flamingo  city.  The  birds  all  moved  and  acted  in 
concert.  Their  numbers  showed  in  the  distance  like 
an  army  of  redcoats;  they  made  the  land  pink.  They 
were  adapted  to  their  marsh  life  by  their  long  legs, 
and  to  the  food  they  ate  by  their  bills,  but  their 
89 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

colors  contrasted  strongly  with  their  surroundings. 
The  community  spirit  carried  things  with  a  high 
hand.  The  same  is  in  a  measure  true  of  the  ibis, 
the  stork,  the  crane  —  all  birds  more  or  less  gre- 
garious, and  all  birds  of  more  or  less  gay  plumes. 
But  our  solitary  great  blue  heron,  lone  watcher  in 
marshes  and  by  pond  and  river  margins,  is  ob- 
scurely colored,  as  is  the  equally  solitary  little  green 
heron. 

Our  blue  heron  will  stand  for  hours  at  a  time  on 
the  margin  of  some  lake  or  pond,  or  on  the  top  of 
some  forest  tree  near  the  water,  and  the  eye  might 
easily  mistake  him  for  some  inanimate  object.  He 
has  watched  among  roots  and  snags  and  dead  tree- 
tops  so  long  that  he  has  naturally  come  to  look 
like  these  things.  What  his  enemies  are,  that  he 
should  need  to  hide  from  them,  other  than  the  fool 
with  the  gun,  I  do  not  know. 

Among  gregarious  mammals  the  same  spirit 
seems  at  work  to  check  or  modify  the  influence  of 
the  environment. 

The  common  crow  illustrates  this  spirit  in  a 
wider  field.  The  crow  is  a  citizen  of  the  world;  he 
is  at  home  everywhere,  but  in  the  matter  of  color 
he  is  at  home  nowhere.  His  jet  black  gives  him 
away  at  all  times  and  in  all  places.  His  great  cun- 
ning and  suspicion  —  whence  do  they  come  ?  From 
his  experiences  with  man  ? 

I  do  not  know  that  there  is  very  much  in  this 
90 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

idea  as  to  the  effect  of  the  social  instinct  upon  the 
colors  of  animals.  I  only  throw  it  out  as  a  sugges- 
tion. 

When  we  come  to  the  reproductive  principle  or 
instinct,  then  do  we  strike  a  dominating  influence; 
then  is  there  contrast  and  excess  and  riot;  then  are 
there  positive  colors  and  showy  ornaments;  then 
are  there  bright  flowers,  red,  orange,  white,  blue; 
then  are  there  gaudy  plumes  of  birds,  and  obtrusive 
forms  and  appendages  in  mammals.  The  old 
modesty  and  moderation  of  nature  are  abandoned. 
It  is  not  now  a  question  of  harmony  and  quietude, 
but  of  continuing  the  species.  Masses  of  color  ap- 
pear in  the  landscape;  silent  animals  become  noisy; 
birds  burst  into  song,  or  strut  and  dance  and  pose 
before  one  another;  the  marshes  are  vocal;  hawks 
scream  and  soar;  a  kind  of  madness  seizes  all  forms 
of  life;  the  quail  whistles;  the  grouse  drums  in  the 
woods,  or  booms  upon  the  prairie;  the  shellfish  in 
the  sea,  and  the  dull  turtle  upon  the  land,  feel  the 
new  impulse  that  thrills  through  nature.  The  car- 
nival of  the  propagating  instinct  is  at  hand.  For 
this,  and  begotten  by  this,  are  the  gaudy  colors  and 
the  beautiful  and  the  grotesque  ornaments. 

As  a  rule,  the  females  are  not  implicated  in  this 
movement  or  craze  to  the  extent  that  the  males  are. 
Even  among  the  flowering  plants  and  trees  in  which 
the  two  sexes  are  separated,  the  male  is  showy 
while  the  female  is  inconspicuous.  The  pollen-yield- 
91 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

ing  catkins  of  the  hazel  and  of  the  hickory  and 
oak  flaunt  in  the  wind,  seen  by  all  passers,  while 
the  minute  fruit-producing  flower  is  seen  by  none. 
Nature  always  keeps  nearer  to  her  low  tones,  to 
her  neutral  ground,  in  the  female  than  in  the 
male;  the  female  is  nearer  the  neuter  gender  than 
is  the  male.  She  is  negative  when  he  is  positive; 
she  is  more  like  the  quiet  color  tones  in  nature;  she 
represents  the  great  home-staying,  conservative, 
brooding  mother  principle  that  pervades  the  uni- 
verse. Harmony,  repose,  flowing  lines,  subdued 
colors,  are  less  the  gift  of  the  aggressive,  warring 
masculine  element  than  of  the  withdrawing  and 
gentle  feminine  element.  That  the  earth  is  our 
mother,  the  sun  our  father,  is  a  feeling  as  old  as  the 
human  race,  and  throughout  the  animal  world  the 
neutral  and  negative  character  of  the  one  and  the 
color  and  excess  of  the  other  still  mark  the  two 
sexes.  Why,  in  the  human  species,  the  woman  runs 
more  to  the  ornate  and  the  superfluous  than  does  the 
man  is  a  question  which  no  doubt  involves  socio- 
logical considerations  that  are  foreign  to  my  subject. 
Darwin  accounts  for  the  wide  departure  from  the 
principle  of  utility  and  of  protective  coloration  in 
the  forms  and  colors  of  so  many  birds  and  mammals 
upon  his  theory  of  sexual  selection,  or  the  prefer- 
ence of  the  female  for  bright  colors  and  odd  forms. 
Wallace  rejects  this  theory,  and  attributes  these 
things  to  the  more  robust  health  and  vigor  of  the 
92 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

males.  However,  in  the  matter  of  health  the  females 
of  all  species  seem  on  a  par  with  the  males,  though 
in  many  cases  the  males  are  the  larger  and  the 
more  powerful.  But  among  our  familiar  birds, 
when  the  two  sexes  differ  in  color,  the  brighter- 
plumaged  male,  with  rare  exceptions,  is  no  larger 
or  more  vigorous  than  the  female. 

The  principle  to  which  I  have  referred  seems  to 
me  adequate  to  account  for  these  gay  plumes  and 
fantastic  forms  —  the  male  sexual  principle,  the 
positive,  aggressive  instinct  of  reproduction,  always 
so  much  more  active  in  the  male  than  in  the  female ; 
an  instinct  or  passion  that  banishes  fear,  prudence, 
cunning,  that  makes  the  timid  bold,  the  sluggish 
active,  that  runs  to  all  sorts  of  excesses,  that  sharpens 
the  senses,  that  quickens  the  pulse,  that  holds  in 
abeyance  hunger  and  even  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  that  arms  for  battle  and  sounds  forth 
the  call,  and  sows  contention  and  strife  everywhere; 
the  principle  that  gives  the  beard  to  the  man,  the 
mane  to  the  lion,  the  antlers  to  the  stag,  the  tusks 
to  the  elephant,  and  —  why  not  ?  —  the  gorgeous 
plumes  and  bright  colors  to  the  male  birds  of  so 
many  species.  The  one  thing  that  Nature  seems  to 
have  most  at  heart  is  reproduction;  she  will  sac- 
rifice almost  everything  else  to  this  —  the  species 
must  be  perpetuated  at  all  hazards,  and  she  has,  as 
a  rule,  laid  the  emphasis  in  this  matter  upon  the 
male.  The  male  in  the  human  species  is  positive, 
93 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

or  plus,  while  the  female  is  negative.  The  life  of 
the  female  among  the  lower  animals  runs  more 
smoothly  and  evenly  —  is  more  on  the  order  of  the 
neutral  tint  —  than  is  that  of  the  male.  The  females 
of  the  same  group  differ  from  one  another  much 
less  than  do  the  males.  The  male  carries  a  com- 
mission that  makes  him  more  restless,  feverish,  and 
pugnacious.  He  is  literally  "spoiling  for  a  fight" 
most  of  the  time.  This  surplusage,  these  loaded 
dice,  make  the  game  pretty  sure. 

Cut  off  the  ugly  bull's  horns,  and  you  have  tamed 
him.  Castration  tames  him  still  more,  and  changes 
his  whole  growth  and  development,  making  him 
approximate  in  form  and  disposition  to  the  female. 
I  fancy  that  the  same  treatment  would  have  the 
same  effect  upon  the  peacock,  or  the  bird  of  para- 
dise, or  any  other  bird  of  fantastic  plumage  and 
high  color.  Destroy  the  power  of  reproduction,  and 
the  whole  masculine  fabric  of  pride  —  prowess, 
weapons  and  badges,  gay  plumes  and  decorations 
—  falls  into  ruins. 

When  we  remember  how  inattentive  and  indif- 
ferent the  females  of  all  species  of  birds  are  to  the 
displays  of  the  males  before  them,  it  is  incredible 
that  their  taste  in  fashions,  their  preferences  for  the 
gay  and  the  ornate,  should  have  played  any  con- 
siderable part  in  superinducing  these  things. 

Darwin  traces  with  great  skill  the  gradual  devel- 
opment of  the  ball  and  socket  ocelli  in  the  plumage 
94 


GAY  PLUMES  AND   DULL 

of  the  Argus  pheasant.  It  was  evidently  a  long, 
slow  process.  Is  it  credible  that  the  female  ob- 
served and  appreciated  each  successive  slight  change 
in  the  growth  of  these  spots,  selecting  those  males 
in  which  the  changes  were  most  marked,  and  re- 
jecting the  others  ?  How  could  she  be  so  influenced 
by  changes  so  slight  and  so  gradual  that  only  a 
trained  eye  would  be  likely  to  take  note  of  them  ? 
It  is  imputing  to  the  female  bird  a  degree  of  taste 
and  a  power  of  discrimination  that  are  found  only 
in  mankind.  Why,  then,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the  male 
so  active  in  showing  off  his  finery  before  the  female  ? 
Of  course  it  is  to  move  her,  to  excite  her  to  the  point 
of  mating  with  him.  His  gay  plumes  are  the  badge 
of  his  masculinity,  and  it  is  to  his  masculinity  that 
her  feminine  nature  responds.  She  is  aroused  when 
he  brings  to  bear  upon  her  all  the  batteries  of  his 
male  sex.  She  is  negative  at  the  start,  as  he  is  pos- 
itive. She  must  be  warmed  up,  and  it  is  his  function 
to  do  it.  She  does  not  select;  she  accepts,  or  rejects. 
The  male  does  the  selecting.  He  offers  himself,  and 
she  refuses  or  agrees,  but  the  initiative  is  with  him 
always.  He  would  doubtless  strut  just  the  same 
were  there  no  hens  about.  He  struts  because  he 
has  to,  because  strutting  is  the  outward  expression 
of  his  feelings.  The  presence  of  the  hen  no  doubt 
aggravates  the  feeling,  and  her  response  is  a  reaction 
to  the  stimuli  he  offers,  just  as  his  own  struttings 
are  reactions  to  the  internal  stimuli  that  are  at  the 
95 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

time  governing  him.  In  the  Zoo  at  the  Bronx  the 
peacock  has  been  seen  to  strut  before  a  crow. 

Undoubtedly  the  males  in  whom  the  masculine 
principle  is  the  strongest  and  most  masterful  are 
most  acceptable  to  the  females,  and  the  marvelous 
development  of  form  and  color  in  the  peacock,  or 
in  the  Argus  pheasant,  might  take  place  under  the 
stimulus  of  continued  success.  If  there  are  two 
rival  cocks  in  the  yard,  the  hens  will,  as  a  rule,  pre- 
fer the  victor  —  the  one  that  struts  the  most  and 
crows  the  loudest.  How  amusing  to  see  the  de- 
feated cock  fold  his  wings,  depress  his  plumage, 
and  look  as  unpretentious  and  henlike  as  possible 
in  the  presence  of  his  master! 

If  the  male  bird  sang  only  while  courting  the 
female,  we  might  think  he  sang  only  to  excite  her 
admiration,  but  he  continues  to  sing  until  the  young 
appear,  and,  fitfully,  long  after  that,  his  bright  col- 
ors in  many  cases  gradually  disappearing  with  his 
declining  song  impulse,  and  both  fading  out  as  the 
sexual  instinct  has  run  its  course.  It  was  the  sexual 
impulse  that  called  them  into  being,  and  they  de- 
cline as  it  declines.  It  is  this  impulse  that  makes 
all  male  birds  so  pugnacious  during  the  breeding 
season.  Not  only  does  a  brighter  iris  come  upon  the 
burnished  dove  in  the  spring,  but  also  a  warmer 
glow  comes  upon  the  robin's  breast,  and  the  hues 
of  all  other  male  birds  are  more  or  less  deepened 
and  intensified  at  this  time.  Among  many  kinds  of 
96 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

fish  the  males  put  on  brighter  colors  in  the  spring, 
and  surely  this  cannot  be  to  win  the  females,  as 
there  is  no  proper  mating  among  them. 

The  odd  forms  and  bizarre  colors  that  so  often 
prevail  among  birds,  more  especially  tropical  and 
semi-tropical  birds,  and  among  insects,  suggest 
fashions  among  men,  capricious,  fantastic,  gaudy, 
often  grotesque,  and  having  no  direct  reference  to 
the  needs  of  the  creatures  possessing  them.  They 
are  clearly  the  riot  and  overflow  of  the  male  sexual 
principle  —  the  carnival  of  the  nuptial  and  breed- 
ing impulse.  The  cock  or  sham  nests  of  the  male 
wrens  seem  to  be  the  result  of  the  excess  and  over- 
flow of  the  same  principle. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  in  my  view  of  the  case,  female 
selection  that  gives  the  males  their  bright  plumage, 
but  the  inborn  tendency  of  the  masculine  principle 
to  riot  and  overplus.  There  is,  strictly  speaking,  no 
wooing,  no  courtship,  among  the  four-footed  beasts, 
and  yet  the  badges  of  masculinity,  manes,  horns, 
tusks,  pride,  pugnacity,  are  as  pronounced  here  as 
are  the  male  adornments  among  the  fowls  of  the  air. 

Why,  among  the  polygamous  species  of  birds,  are 
the  males  so  much  more  strongly  marked  than 
among  the  monogamous  ?  Why,  but  as  a  result  of 
the  superabundance  and  riot  of  the  male  sexual 
principle?  In  some  cases  among  the  quadrupeds 
it  even  greatly  increases  the  size  of  the  males  over 
the  females,  as  among  the  polygamous  fur  seals. 
97 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

Darwin  came  very  near  to  the  key  of  the  problem 
that  engaged  him,  when  he  said  that  the  reason 
why  the  male  has  been  the  more  modified  in  those 
cases  where  the  sexes  differ  in  external  appearance 
is  that  "  the  males  of  almost  all  animals  have 
stronger  passions  than  the  females." 

"In  mankind,  and  even  as  low  down  in  the  scale 
as  in  the  Lepidoptera,  the  temperature  of  the  body 
is  higher  in  the  male  than  in  the  female."  (Darwin.) 

If  the  female  refuses  the  male,  it  is  not  because  he 
does  not  fill  her  eye  or  arouse  her  admiration,  but 
because  the  mating  instinct  is  not  yet  ripe.  Among 
nearly  all  our  birds  the  males  fairly  thrust  them- 
selves upon  the  females,  and  carry  them  by  storm. 
This  may  be  seen  almost  any  spring  day  in  the 
squabbles  of  the  English  sparrows  along  the  street. 
The  female  appears  to  resist  all  her  suitors,  defend- 
ing herself  against  them  by  thrusting  spitefully 
right  and  left,  and  just  what  decides  her  finally  to 
mate  with  any  one  of  them  is  a  puzzle.  It  may  be 
stated  as  a  general  rule  that  all  females  are  reluctant 
or  negative,  and  all  males  are  eager  or  positive,  and 
that  the  male  wins,  not  through  the  taste  of  the 
female,  —  her  love  for  bright  colors  and  ornamental 
appendages,  — but  through  the  dominance  of  his 
own  masculinity.  He  is  the  stronger  force,  he  is 
aggressive  and  persuasive,  and  finally  kindles  her 
with  his  own  breeding  instinct. 

Even  among  creatures  so  low  in  the  scale  of  life 
98 


GAY  PLUMES  AND  DULL 

as  the  crab,  the  males  of  certain  species,  during 
the  breeding  season,  dance  and  gyrate  about  the 
females,  assuming  many  grotesque  postures  and 
behaving  as  if  intoxicated  —  as,  indeed,  they  are, 
with  the  breeding  passion. 

Evidently  the  female  crab  does  not  prefer  one 
male  over  another,  but  mates  with  the  one  that 
offers  himself,  as  soon  as  he  has  excited  her  to  the 
mating  point.  And  I  have  no  proof  that  among 
the  birds  the  female  ever  shows  preference  for  one 
male  over  another;  she  must  be  won,  of  course,  and 
she  is  won  when  the  male  has  sufficiently  aroused 
her;  she  does  not  choose  a  mate,  but  accepts  one 
at  the  right  time.  I  have  seen  two  male  bluebirds 
fight  for  hours  over  a  female,  while  she  sat  and 
looked  on  indifferently.  And  I  have  seen  two 
females  fight  over  a  male,  while  he  sat  and  looked 
on  with  equal  indifference.  "  Either  will  suit,  but  I 
want  but  one." 

Of  course  Nature  does  not  work  as  man  works. 
Our  notions  of  prudence,  of  precision,  of  rule  and 
measure,  are  foreign  to  her  ways.  The  stakes  are 
hers,  whoever  wins.  She  works  by  no  inflexible 
system  or  plan,  she  is  spontaneous  and  variable 
every  moment.  She  heaps  the  measure,  or  she  scants 
the  measure,  and  it  is  all  one  to  her.  Our  easy 
explanations  of  her  ways  —  how  often  they  leave 
us  where  they  found  us !  The  balance  of  life  upon 
the  globe  is  fairly  well  maintained  by  checks  and 
99 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

counter-checks,  by  some  species  being  prolific  and 
other  species  less  so,  by  the  development  of  assimi- 
lative colors  by  one  kind,  and  of  showy  colors  by 
another,  by  slow  but  ceaseless  modifications  and 
adaptations.  It  is  a  problem  of  many  and  complex 
factors,  in  which,  no  doubt,  color  plays  its  part, 
but  I  believe  this  part  is  a  minor  one. 

NOTE. — Since  writing  the  above  essay  I  have  read  Geddes 
and  Thomson  on  "  The  Evolution  of  Sex,"  and  find  that  these  in- 
vestigators have  anticipated  my  main  idea  in  regard  to  the  high 
coloration  and  ornamentation  of  male  birds,  namely  that  these 
things  inhere  in  the  male  principle,  or  are  "natural  to  maleness." 
The  males  put  on  more  beauty  than  females  "because  they 
are  males,  and  not  primarily  for  any  other  reason  whatever." 
"  Bright  coloring  or  rich  pigmentation  is  more  characteristic  of 
the  male  than  of  the  female  constitution."  "  Males  are  stronger, 
handsomer,  or  more  emotional  simply  because  they  are  males, 
—  i.  e.,  of  more  active  physiological  habit  than  their  mates." 
The  males  tend  to  live  at  a  loss,  and  are  relatively  more  kata- 
bolic;  the  females,  on  the  other  hand,  tend  to  live  at  a  profit, 
and  are  relatively  more  anabolic. 

"  Brilliancy  of  color,  exuberance  of  hair  and  feathers,  activity 
of  scent-glands,  and  even  the  development  of  weapons,  cannot 
be  satisfactorily  explained  by  sexual  selection  alone,  for  this  is 
merely  a  secondary  factor.  In  origin  and  continued  develop- 
ment they  are  outcrops  of  a  male  as  opposed  to  a  female  con- 
stitution." 


VI 

STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  STRAIGHT 
THINKING 


A  NEWSPAPER  correspondent  the  other  day 
asked  me  what  I  meant  by  truth  in  natural 
history.  "  We  know  that  no  two  persons  see  alike," 
he  said,  "or  see  the  same  things;  behold  the  dis- 
agreements in  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses  to 
the  same  occurrences."  "True,"  I  replied;  "but 
when  two  persons  shoot  at  a  mark,  they  must  see 
alike  if  they  are  both  to  hit  the  mark,  and  two  wit- 
nesses to  a  murder  or  a  robbery  must  agree  sub- 
stantially in  their  testimony  if  they  expect  to  be 
credited  in  the  court-room."  In  like  manner,  two 
observers  in  the  field  of  natural  history  must  in  the 
main  agree  in  their  statements  of  fact  if  their  obser- 
vations are  to  have  any  scientific  value.  Notwith- 
standing it  is  true  that  we  do  not  all  see  the  same 
things  when  we  go  to  the  fields  and  woods,  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  accurate  seeing,  and  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  inaccurate  seeing  and  reporting. 

By  truth  in  natural  history  I  can  mean  only  that 
which  is  verifiable ;  that  which  others  may  see  under 
like  conditions,  or  which  accords  with  the  observa- 
101 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

tions  of  others.  You  may  not  see  just  what  I  do  in 
the  lives  of  the  birds  or  the  quadrupeds,  but  you 
will  see  that  which  belongs  to  the  same  order  of 
facts,  just  as  you  will  in  the  world  of  physics.  You 
will  not  see  iron  floating  and  wood  sinking  under 
like  conditions,  or  trees  growing  with  their  roots  in 
the  air.  You  may  see  to-day  something  in  the  life 
of  a  bird,  or  a  bee,  or  a  beast,  that  neither  I  nor 
any  one  else  ever  saw  before,  but  it  will  belong  to 
the  same  order  of  things  that  I  and  others  have 
seen  these  creatures  do.  You  will  not  see  a  wood- 
chuck  hanging  to  a  limb  by  his  tail  like  a  possum, 
nor  a  fox  sleeping  in  the  top  of  a  tree  like  a  coon, 
nor  a  loon  running  a  race  between  lines  of  inter- 
ested spectators,  nor  crows  hoarding  trinkets  in 
a  hollow  stump,  nor  the  old  teaching  their  young 
this  or  that,  and  so  on.  No,  you  may  send  a  thou- 
sand good  observers  to  the  woods  every  day  for 
a  thousand  years,  and  not  one  of  them  will  see  any 
of  the  novel  and  surprising,  not  to  say  impossible, 
things  of  which  the  "nature  fakers"  see  so  many 
every  time  they  take  a  walk.  The  nature  faker's 
fantastic  natural  history  is  not  verifiable.  I  have 
seen  blackbirds  build  their  nests  in  the  side  of  an  os- 
prey's  nest,  and  all  seemed  to  go  well — the  osprey 
is  exclusively  a  fish-eater  —  but  if  any  person  were 
to  tell  me  that  he  had  seen  them  build  their  nests 
alongside  of  that  of  the  eagle  or  the  hen-hawk,  or 
that  he  had  seen  bluebirds  breeding  in  a  cavity  with 
102 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

the  hoot  owl,  I  should  know  him  as  a  faker.  The 
rabbit  is  not  on  visiting  terms  with  the  fox  or  the 
mink,  nor  do  the  robins  welcome  a  call  from  the 
jays. 

I  did  something  the  other  day  with  a  wild  animal 
that  I  had  never  done  before  or  seen  done,  though 
I  had  heard  of  it:  I  carried  a  live  skunk  by  the  tail, 
and  there  was  "  nothing  doing/'  as  the  boys  say. 
I  did  not  have  to  bury  my  clothes.  I  knew  from 
observation  that  the  skunk  could  not  use  its  battery 
with  effect  without  throwing  its  tail  over  its  back; 
therefore,  for  once  at  least,  I  had  the  courage  of 
my  convictions  and  verified  the  fact. 

A  great  many  intelligent  persons  tolerate  or 
encourage  our  fake  natural  history  on  the  ground 
that  they  find  it  entertaining,  and  that  it  interests 
the  school -children  in  the  wild  life  about  them. 
Is  the  truth,  then,  without  value  for  its  own  sake? 
What  would  these  good  people  think  of  a  United 
States  school  history  that  took  the  same  liberties 
with  facts  that  certain  of  our  nature  writers  do : 
that,  for  instance,  made  Washington  take  his  army 
over  the  Delaware  in  balloons,  or  in  sleighs  on  the 
solid  ice  with  bands  playing;  or  that  made  Lincoln 
a  victim  of  the  Evil  Eye;  or  that  portrayed  his 
slayer  as  a  self-sacrificing  hero ;  or  that  represented 
the  little  Monitor  that  eventful  day  on  Hampton 
Roads  as  diving  under  the  Merrimac  and  tossing 
it  ashore  on  its  beak? 

103 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

The  nature  fakers  take  just  this  kind  of  liberties 
with  the  facts  of  our  natural  history.  The  young 
reader  finds  it  entertaining,  no  doubt,  but  is  this 
sufficient  justification  ? 

Again,  I  am  told  that  the  extravagant  stories  of 
our  wild  life  are  or  may  be  true  from  the  writer's 
point  of  view.  One  of  our  publishing  houses  once 
took  me  to  task  for  criticising  the  statements  of  one 
of  its  authors  by  charging  that  I  had  not  consid- 
ered his  point  of  view.  The  fact  is,  I  had  considered 
it  too  well ;  his  point  of  view  was  that  of  the  man 
who  tells  what  is  not  so.  As  if  there  could  be  more 
than  one  legitimate  point  of  view  in  natural  history 
observation  —  the  point  of  view  of  fact ! 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  loose  thinking  upon  this 
subject  in  the  public  mind. 

An  editorial  writer  in  a  New  England  newspaper, 
defending  this  school  of  writers,  says : — 

"  Their  point  of  view  is  that  of  the  great  out-of- 
doors,  and  comes  from  loving  sympathy  with  the 
life  they  study,  and  is  as  different  from  that  of  the 
sportsman  and  the  laboratory  zoologist  as  a  note- 
book differs  from  a  rifle  or  a  microscope." 

Now  how  the  point  of  view  of  the  "  great  out-of- 
doors  "  can  differ  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  little 
indoors  in  regard  to  matters  of  fact  is  hard  to  see. 
A  man  who  watches  the  ways  of  an  animal  in  the 
wilderness,  or  from  the  mountain-top,  is  bound  by 
the  same  laws  of  truthfulness  as  the  man  who  sees 
104 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

it  through  his  study  window.  What  the  writer 
means  is  doubtless  that  the  spirit  in  which  the  lit- 
erary naturalist  —  the  man  who  goes  to  the  fields 
and  woods  for  material  for  literature  —  treats  the 
facts  of  natural  history  differs  from  the  spirit  in 
which  the  man  of  pure  science  treats  his.  Undoubt- 
edly, but  the  two  alike  deal  with  facts,  though  with 
facts  of  a  different  order. 

The  scientist,  the  artist,  the  nature-lover,  and  the 
like,  all  look  for  and  find  different  things  in  nature, 
yet  there  is  no  contradiction  between  the  different 
things  they  find.  The  truth  of  one  is  not  the  false- 
hood of  another.  The  field  naturalist  is  interested  in 
the  live  animal,  the  laboratory  zoologist  in  the  mea- 
suring and  dissecting  of  the  dead  carcass.  What 
interests  one  is  of  little  or  no  interest  to  the  other. 
So  with  the  field  botanist  as  compared  with  the  mere 
herbalist.  Both  are  seekers  for  the  truth,  but  for  a 
different  kind  of  truth.  One  seeks  that  kind  of  truth 
that  appeals  to  his  emotion  and  to  his  imagina- 
tion ;  the  other  that  kind  of  truth  —  truth  of  struc- 
ture, relation  of  parts,  family  ties  —  that  appeals 
to  his  scientific  faculties.  Does  this  fact,  therefore, 
give  the  nature  faker  warrant  to  exaggerate  or  to 
falsify  the  things  he  sees  in  the  fields  and  woods  ? 
Let  him  make  the  most  of  what  he  sees,  embellish 
it,  amplify  it,  twirl  it  on  the  point  of  his  peri  like 
a  juggler,  but  let  him  beware  of  adding  to  it ;  let 
him  be  sure  he  sees  accurately.  Let  him  beware 
105 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

of  letting  invention  take  the  place  of  observation. 
It  is  one  thing  to  work  your  gold  or  silver  up  into 
sparkling  ornaments,  and  quite  another  to  manu- 
facture an  imitation  gold  or  silver,  and  this  is  what 
the  nature  fakers  do.  Their  natural  history  is  for 
the  most  part  a  sham,  a  counterfeit.  No  one  quarrels 
with  them  because  they  are  not  scientific,  or  because 
they  deal  in  something  more  than  dry  facts ;  the 
ground  of  quarrel  is  that  they  do  not  start  with 
facts,  that  they  grossly  and  absurdly  misrepresent 
the  wild  lives  they  claim  to  portray. 

A  Wisconsin  editor,  writing  upon  this  subject, 
shoots  wide  of  the  mark  in  the  same  way  as  does  the 
New  England  editor.  "Knowledge  born  of  scientific 
curiosity,"  he  says,  "has  nothing  in  common  with 
the  study  of  animal  individuality  which  the  'nature 
fakers'  have  fostered  and  to  which  the  public  has 
proved  responsive.  There  is  all  the  difference  in 
the  world  between  being  interested  in  the  length  of 
an  animal's  skull  and  being  interested  in  the  same 
animal's  ways  and  personality."  True  enough,  but 
this  is  quite  beside  the  mark.  The  point  at  issue  is 
a  question  of  accurate  seeing  and  reporting.  The 
man  who  is  reporting  upon  an  animal's  ways  and 
personality  is  bound  by  the  same  obligations  of 
truthfulness  as  the  man  who  is  occupied  with  the 
measurements  of  its  skull.  By  all  means  let  the 
literary  naturalist  give  us  traits  instead  of  measure- 
ments. This  he  is  bound  to  do,  and  the  better 
106 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

he  does  it,  the  better  we  shall  like  him.  We  can  get 
our  statistics  elsewhere.  From  him  we  want  pic- 
tures, action,  incident,  and  the  portrait  of  the  living 
animal.  But  we  want  it  all  truthfully  done.  The 
life  history  of  any  of  our  wild  creatures,  the  daily 
and  hourly  course  of  its  life,  all  its  traits  and  pe- 
culiarities, all  its  adventures  and  ways  of  getting 
on  in  the  world,  are  of  keen  interest  to  every  nature 
student,  but  if  these  things  are  misrepresented, 
what  then  ?  There  are  readers,  I  believe,  who  say 
they  don't  care  whether  the  thing  is  true  or  not ; 
at  any  rate  it  is  interesting,  and  that  is  enough. 
What  can  one  say  to  such  readers  ?  Only  that  they 
should  not  complain  if  they  are  stuck  with  paste 
diamonds,  or  pinchbeck  gold,  or  shoddy  cloth,  or 
counterfeit  bills. 

The  truth  of  animal  life  is  more  interesting  than 
any  fiction  about  it.  Can  there  be  any  doubt,  for 
instance,  that  if  one  knew  just  how  the  fur  seals 
find  their  way  back  from  the  vast  wilderness  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  where  there  is,  apparently,  nothing 
for  the  eye,  or  the  ear,  or  the  nose  to  seize  upon  in 
guiding  them,  to  the  little  island  in  Bering  Sea  that 
is  their  breeding  haunt  in  spring  —  can  there  be 
any  doubt,  I  say,  that  such  knowledge  would  be 
vastly  more  interesting  than  anything  our  natural 
history  romancers  could  invent  about  it  ?  But  it  is 
the  way  of  our  romancers  to  draw  upon  their  in- 
vention when  their  observation  fails  them.  Thus 
107 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

one  of  them  tells  how  the  salmon  get  up  the  high 
falls  that  they  meet  with  in  the  rivers  they  ascend 
in  spring  —  it  is  by  easy  stages;  they  rest  upon 
shelves  or  upon  niches  in  the  rocks  behind  the  cur- 
tain of  water,  and  leap  from  these  upward  through 
the  pouring  current  till  the  top  is  gained ;  and  he 
tells  it  as  if  he  knew  it  to  be  a  fact,  when,  in  truth, 
it  is  a  fiction. 

Then  this  so-called  individuality  of  the  animals 
is  enormously  exaggerated  by  the  nature  fakers. 
The  difference  between  two  individuals  of  the  same 
species  in  a  wild  state  is  but  a  small  matter.  What 
is  true  of  one  is  practically  true  of  all  the  others. 
They  are  all  subject  to  the  same  conditions,  and 
the  life  problems  are  essentially  the  same  with  each ; 
hence  their  variations  are  but  slight,  while  in  the 
case  of  man  the  variations  are  enormous.  One  child 
is  born  a  genius  and  another  is  born  a  dunce.  The 
mass  of  mankind  would  still  be  sunk  in  barbarism 
had  it  not  been  for  the  few  superior  minds  born  in 
every  age  and  country,  who  have  lifted  the  stand- 
ard of  living  and  thinking  to  a  higher  plane.  It  is 
only  when  the  lower  animals  are  brought  in  contact 
with  man  and  subjected  to  artificial  conditions  that 
wide  diversity  of  character  and  disposition  appears 
among  them.  Then  we  have  on  the  farm  the  buck- 
ing horse,  the  intractable  ox,  the  unruly  cow,  and, 
in  the  circus,  the  trained  lion  or  tiger  or  elephant 
that  suddenly  "goes  bad."  In  domestication  the 
108 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

difference  in  the  disposition  of  squirrels,  foxes, 
coons,  and  other  animals  comes  out,  but  in  the  wild 
state  their  habits  and  traits  are  practically  all  the 
same.  A  fox  hunter  who  knows  his  territory  well 
will  point  out  to  you  the  course  all  foxes  when  pur- 
sued by  the  hounds  are  very  likely  to  take,  genera- 
tion after  generation ;  the  conformation  of  the  land 
determining  the  course.  Rarely  does  the  fox  run 
wild  and  upset  the  calculations  of  the  hunter.  But 
the  differences  between  the  behavior  of  hunted 
animals  under  like  conditions  is  not,  I  think,  an 
evidence  of  original  traits  and  dispositions  in  the 
hunted.  One  grizzly,  or  one  moose,  or  one  wild 
boar  will  charge  you  when  wounded,  and  another 
will  run  away.  So  will  one  stick  of  dynamite  ex- 
plode in  the  handling  while  others  remain  inert ;  so 
will  one  swarm  of  bees  be  ugly  to-day  and  docile 
to-morrow.  Slight  differences  in  external  condi- 
tions, no  doubt,  determine  the  result  in  each  case. 
I  see  the  herring  gulls  flying  up  the  river  above 
the  floating  ice,  as  I  write.  Now  all  those  gulls  may 
not  be  absolutely  alike  to  the  last  feather,  but  they 
are  as  nearly  alike  in  character  as  the  fragments  of 
floating  ice  are  alike  in  character.  I  would  not  dare 
affirm  any  trait  or  characteristic  of  one  that  I  would 
not  affirm  of  all  the  others.  And  the  score  or  more 
of  crows  perched  upon  the  ice  beneath  them  — what 
one  of  those  crows  will  do  in  its  wild  state,  each  and 
every  other  crow  will  or  may  do.  There  are  no 
109 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

geniuses  or  heroes  among  them.  Hence  when  our 
nature  fakers  claim  that  they  study  individuals  and 
not  species,  they  need  watching.  Let  them  exploit 
the  individual  certainly,  but  let  them  be  cautious 
how  they  claim  exceptional  traits  or  intelligence 
for  it. 

Let  me  return  to  the  editors.  One  of  our  most 
influential  weekly  journals,  in  defending  the  nature 
fakers  against  the  attack  of  President  Roosevelt, 
makes  this  statement :  — 

"We  quite  agree  that  fiction  ought  not  to  be 
palmed  off  on  school-children  as  fact;  but  we* do 
not  agree  with  what  is  implied,  that  imagination 
may  not  be  used  in  interpreting  and  narrating  facts. 
Men  see  through  their  temperaments ;  the  imagina- 
tive man  sees  through  his  imagination,  and  he  is 
telling  the  truth  if  he  tells  what  he  sees  as  he  sees  it. 
Mr.  Froude,  who  had  a  vivid  historical  imagination, 
was  bitterly  condemned  by  Mr.  Freeman,  who  had 
none ;  but  Mr.  Froude's  history  is  not  only  interest- 
ing, while  Mr.  Freeman's  is  dull,  but  very  eminent 
authorities  regard  him  as  the  better  historian  of  the 
two." 

Behold  what  confusion  of  thought  there  is  in  this 
paragraph.  The  writer  confounds  the  interpre- 
tation of  facts  with  the  observation  of  facts;  he 
confounds  the  world  of  ideas  with  the  world  of 
concrete  experiences ;  he  confounds  the  historian  of 
human  annals  with  the  eye-witness  of  daily  events  in 
110 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

the  lives  of  our  wild  creatures.  Neither  Froude  nor 
Freeman  wrote  from  observation  or  experience,  as 
our  nature  fakers  claim  to,  but  from  the  study  of 
past  men  and  events  as  recorded  by  others.  They 
were  interpreting  the  records,  and  their  tempera- 
ments and  imaginations  greatly  modified  the  results. 
But  other  things  being  equal,  would  we  not  prefer 
the  historian  who  kept  closest  to  the  record,  to  the 
actual  facts,  of  the  case  ?  Truthfulness  is  a  merit, 
imagination  is  a  merit,  and  neither  can  take  the 
place  of  the  other.  When  the  two  are  combined,  we 
get  the  best  results. 

Truth  in  natural  history  is  much  easier  to  reach 
than  truth  in  civil  history.  Civil  history  is  vastly 
more  complex.  Moreover,  it  is  of  the  past  in  a  sense 
that  the  other  is  not,  and  the  writers  of  it  are  rarely 
the  eye-witnesses  of  the  events  they  describe ;  while 
natural  history  is  being  daily  and  hourly  enacted  all 
around  us,  and  varies  but  little  from  year  to  year. 
A  truthful  account  of  the  life  history  of  one  animal 
holds  substantially  correct  for  all  the  rest  of  that 
species  in  different  places  and  times.  The  animal  is 
a  part  of  its  environment,  and  has  no  independent 
history  in  the  sense  that  a  man  has. 

Certainly  "  the  imagination  may  be  used  in  inter- 
preting and  narrating  facts"  -must  be  used,  if 
anything  of  literary  value  is  to  be  the  outcome.  But 
it  is  one  thing  to  treat  your  facts  with  imagination 
and  quite  another  to  imagine  your  facts.  So  long 
111 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

as  the  natural  historian  or  the  human  historian  is 
sound  upon  his  facts,  we  know  where  we  stand. 
But  the  faker  is  a  faker  because  he  disregards  the 
facts.  Froude  uses  more  imagination  in  dealing 
with  his  material  than  Freeman  did,  hence  he  has 
much  greater  charm  and  power  of  style.  It  is  only 
when  he  disregards  the  fact,  or  takes  unwarranted 
liberties  with  it,  that  Freeman  can  justly  criticise  him. 

There  has  been  no  such  luminous  interpreter  of 
the  facts  of  natural  history  as  Darwin;  he  read 
their  meaning  as  no  one  else  had  ever  before  done. 
His  reason  and  his  imagination  went  hand  in  hand. 
But  was  there  ever  a  mind  more  loyal  to  the  exact 
truth  ?  Every  man  who  brought  him  a  fact  brought 
him  material  for  the  edifice  he  was  so  intent  upon 
building  —  an  edifice  which  the  human  mind  since 
his  day  is  dwelling  in  with  more  and  more  content- 
ment. 

It  is  in  the  interpretation  of  natural  facts  and 
phenomena  that  temperament,  imagination,  emo- 
tional sensibility,  come  in  play.  In  all  subjective 
fields  —  in  religion,  politics,  art,  philosophy  —  one 
man's  truth  may  be  another  man's  falsehood,  but 
in  the  actual  concrete  world  of  observation  and 
experience,  if  we  all  see  correctly,  we  shall  all  see 
alike.  Blue  is  blue  and  red  is  red,  and  our  color- 
blindness does  not  alter  the  fact.  In  emotional  and 
imaginative  fields  a  man  may  be  "  telling  the  truth 
if  he  tells  what  he  sees  as  he  sees  it,"  but  in  the  field 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

I 

of  actual  observation  he  is  telling  the  truth  only 
when  he  tells  the  thing  as  it  really  is,  reports  the 
habits  and  behavior  of  the  animals  as  they  really 
are.  What  do  we  mean  by  powers  of  observation 
but  the  power  to  see  the  thing  as  it  is  —  to  see  the 
truth?  An  opulent  imagination  cannot  make  up 
for  feeble  powers  of  observation.  The  effect  the 
fact  observed  has  upon  you,  what  you  make  of  it, 
what  it  signifies  to  you  —  that  is  another  matter. 
Here  interpretation  comes  in,  and  on  this  line  you 
have  the  field  all  to  yourself.  I  may  think  your 
interpretation  absurd,  but  I  shall  not  question  your 
veracity  or  honesty  of  purpose.  We  are  very  likely 
to  differ  in  taste,  in  opinions  about  this  and  that, 
in  religion,  politics,  art,  but  we  must  agree  upon 
facts.  Unless  there  is  some  chance  that  men  can 
see  and  report  accurately,  what  becomes  of  the 
value  of  human  testimony  as  given  by  eye-witnesses 
on  the  witness  stand  ?  Things  do  fall  out  so  and 
so,  or  they  fall  out  otherwise ;  it  is  not  a  matter  of 
imagination  or  of  temperament  in  the  beholder, 
but  a  matter  of  accurate  seeing.  In  getting  at  the 
value  of  a  man's  testimony  we  may  have  to  take 
into  account  his  excitable  or  his  phlegmatic  tem- 
perament and  the  seductive  power  of  his  imagina- 
tion, and  eliminate  them  as  so  much  dross  in  a 
metal.  Eye-witnesses  generally  differ;  we  must 
reconcile  the  differences  and  sift  out  the  facts. 
The  animal -story  writers,  such  as  Mr.  Roberts 
113 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

and  Mr.  Seton,  aim  to  give  the  charm  of  art  and 
literature  to  their  natural -history  lore ;  so  to  work 
up  their  facts  that  they  appeal  to  our  emotion  and 
imagination.  This  is  legitimate  and  a  high  calling, 
provided  they  do  not  transgress  the  rule  I  have 
been  laying  down,  which  Mr.  Roberts  does  when 
he  represents  the  skunk  as  advertising  his  course 
through  the  woods  to  all  other  creatures  by  his 
characteristic  odor,  since  the  skunk  emits  that  odor 
only  when  attacked,  and  is  at  all  other  times  as 
odorless  as  a  squirrel;  or  when  he  says  the  fox  is 
too  cunning  to  raid  the  poultry  yard  near  its  own 
door,  but  will  go  far  off  for  its  plunder.  I  wish  the 
pair  of  foxes  that  had  their  den  within  easy  rifle- 
shot of  our  farmhouse  the  past  season  had  acted 
upon  this  policy.  We  should  have  reared  more 
chickens,  and  one  of  the  foxes  would  not  have  met 
his  death  in  a  charge  of  shot  as  he  did  while  he 
was  chasing  a  hen  through  the  currant  patch  in 
broad  daylight. 

The  principal  aim  of  the  teacher  of  nature  study 
in  the  schools  should  be  to  help  the  children  to 
see  straight,  to  develop  and  sharpen  their  powers 
of  observation,  and  to  give  them  rational  views  of 
animal  mentality. 

When  one  of  our  nature  writers,  whose  methods 

have  been  much  criticised,  says  in  the  introduction 

to  one  of  his  books  on  animal  life  that  he  would 

"make  nature  study  more  vital  and  attractive  by 

114 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

revealing  a  vast  realm  of  nature  outside  the  realm 
of  science,"  is  not  one  set  to  puzzling  one's  brain 
as  to  how  there  can  be  any  legitimate  nature  study 
that  will  carry  one  beyond  the  realm  of  science? 
Is  there  any  subject-matter  in  the  books  thus  pre- 
faced that  science  cannot  deal  with  ?  And  why  does 
the  author  aver  with  such  emphasis  that  his  facts 
are  all  true  and  verifiable  ?  —  just  the  test  that 
science  demands.  If  it  is  all  true  and  sound  natural 
history,  what  puts  it  outside  the  realm  of  science? 
If  it  is  not  true  and  real,  why  call  it  nature  study? 
Why  not  call  it  the  gentle  art  of  bearing  false  wit- 
ness against  the  animals  ?  But  this  realm  of  nature 
outside  the  realm  of  science  —  the  realm  of  the 
occult — is  not  open  to  observation,  and  is  therefore 
not  a  subject  for  nature  study.  The  realm  of  science 
embraces  the  whole  visible,  tangible,  and  intangible 
universe.  Is  not  that  field  enough  for  nature  study  ? 
Can  there  be  any  other  field  ?  What  lies  outside  of 
this  is  mere  matter  of  speculation. 

The  works  of  the  writer  referred  to  are  outside 
the  realm  of  science  only  as  every  exaggeration  and 
falsification  is  outside  that  realm,  or  as  Alice  in 
Wonderland  and  Jack  and  his  beanstalk  are  out- 
side. Such  a  course  may  make  nature  study  more 
attractive  to  certain  credulous  minds,  but  it  can 
hardly  make  it  more  vital,  or  add  to  our  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  its  denizens  by  which  we  are 
surrounded. 

115 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

ii 

To  see  accurately  and  completely  is  a  power 
given  to  few ;  hence  the  observations  of  the  majority 
of  people  are  of  no  scientific  value  whatever.  One 
spring  I  was  interested  in  the  question  as  to  how 
the  crow  picks  up  a  dead  fish  or  other  food  from  the 
surface  of  the  water  —  with  its  feet  or  its  bill.  One 
would  naturally  say  with  its  bill,  of  course,  as  all 
except  the  rapacious  birds  hold  and  carry  things  in 
their  beaks.  But  one  of  our  younger  nature  writers 
made  the  crow  carry  food  for  its  young  in  its  claws, 
and  a  teacher  of  zoology  in  a  Western  academy 
wrote  that  he  had  seen  a  crow  pick  up  a  dead  fish 
from  a  pond  and  carry  it  ashore  with  its  feet.  I 
wrote  and  cross-questioned  the  teacher  a  little; 
among  other  things,!  asked  him  if  he  had  the  point 
in  question  in  mind  when  he  saw  the  crow  pick 
up  the  fish.  As  I  never  received  an  answer,  I  con- 
cluded that  this  witness  broke  down  on  the  cross- 
examination. 

I  put  the  question  to  fishermen  on  the  river :  Had 
they  ever  seen  a  crow  pick  up  anything  from  the 
surface  of  the  water?  Oh,  yes,  lots  of  times.  Did 
he  seize  the  object  with  his  feet  or  his  beak  ?  They 
would  pause  and  think,  and  then  some  would  reply, 
"Indeed,  I  can't  say;  I  did  not  notice."  One  man 
said  emphatically,  "With  his  feet;"  another  was 
quite  as  sure  it  was  done  with  the  bill. 
116 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

I  myself  was  sure  I  had  seen  crows  pick  up  food 
from  the  water,  as  gulls  do,  with  the  bill.  I  had  the 
vision  of  that  low  stooping  of  the  head  while  the  bird 
was  in  the  act.  I  asked  my  son,  who  spends  much 
time  on  the  river,  and  who  is  a  keen  observer.  He 
had  often  seen  the  thing  done,  but  was  not  certain 
whether  it  was  with  the  beak  or  the  feet.  A  few  days 
later  he  was  on  the  river,  and  saw  a  crow  that  had 
spied  a  fragment  of  a  loaf  of  bread  floating  on  the 
water.  Having  the  point  in  mind,  he  watched  the 
crow  attentively.  Down  came  old  crow  with  ex- 
tended legs,  and  my  son  said  to  himself,  "Yes,  he  is 
going  to  seize  it  with  his  feet."  But  he  did  not ;  his 
legs  went  down  into  the  water,  for  what  purpose  I 
cannot  say,  but  he  seized  the  bread  with  his  beak, 
rose  up  with  it  and  then  dropped  it,  then  seized  it 
again  in  the  same  way  and  bore  it  toward  a  tree  on 
the  shore.  Not  many  days  later  I  saw  a  crow  pick 
up  something  from  the  river  in  the  same  way :  the 
feet  went  into  the  water,  but  the  object  was  seized 
with  the  beak.  The  crow's  feet  are  not  talons,  and 
are  adapted  only  to  perching  and  walking.  So  far 
as  I  know,  all  our  birds,  except  birds  of  prey,  carry 
their  food  and  their  nesting-material  in  their  beaks. 

One  day  I  saw  an  eagle  flying  over  with  some- 
thing like  a  rope  dangling  from  its  feet,  probably 
a  black  snake.  A  bird  carries  its  capture  with  the 
member  by  which  it  seizes  it,  which  with  birds  of 
prey  is  the  foot,  and  with  other  birds  the  beak.  The 
117 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

kingfisher  lives  upon  fish,  and  he  always  seizes  them 
with  his  beak  and  swallows  them  head  foremost. 

Any  testimony  the  value  of  which  depends  upon 
accuracy  in  seeing  needs  to  be  well  sifted,  so  few 
persons  see  straight  and  see  whole.  They  see  a  part, 
and  then  guess  or  fancy  the  rest.  I  have  read  that 
the  Scotch  fishermen  will  tell  you  that  the  loon 
carries  its  egg  under  its  wing  till  it  hatches.  One 
would  say  they  are  in  a  position  to  know;  their 
occupations  bring  them  often  into  the  haunts  of 
the  loon;  yet  the  notion  is  entirely  erroneous.  The 
loon  builds  a  nest  and  incubates  its  eggs  upon  the 
ground  as  surely  as  does  the  goose  or  duck. 

Not  till  the  mind  is  purged  of  dread,  superstition, 
and  all  notions  of  a  partnership  between  the  visible 
and  the  occult  will  the  eye  see  straight.  The  mind 
that  is  athirst  for  the  marvelous  and  the  mysterious 
will  rarely  see  straight.  The  mind  that  believes  the 
wild  creatures  are  half  human,  that  they  plot  and 
plan  and  reason  as  men  do,  will  not  see  straight, 
or  report  the  facts  without  addition  or  diminution. 
There  is  plenty  that  is  curious  and  inexplicable  in 
nature,  things  that  astonish  or  baffle  us,  but  there  is 
no  "hocus-pocus,"  nothing  that  moves  on  the  bor- 
der-land between  the  known  and  the  unknown,  or 
that  justifies  the  curious  superstitions  of  the  past. 
Things  of  the  twilight  are  more  elusive  and  difficult 
of  verification  than  things  of  the  noon,  but  they  are 
no  less  real,  and  no  less  a  part  of  the  common  day. 
118 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

I  was  reminded  of  this  lately  on  hearing  the  twi- 
light flight  song  of  the  woodcock  —  one  of  the  most 
curious  and  tantalizing  yet  interesting  bird  songs 
we  have.  I  fancy  that  the  persons  who  hear  and 
recognize  it  in  the  April  or  May  twilight  are  few  and 
far  between.  I  myself  have  heard  it  only  on  three 
occasions  —  one  season  in  late  March,  one  season 
in  April,  and  the  last  time  in  the  middle  of  May.  It 
is  a  voice  of  ecstatic  song  coming  down  from  the 
upper  air  and  through  the  mist  and  the  darkness  — 
the  spirit  of  the  swamp  and  the  marsh  climbing 
heavenward  and  pouring  out  its  joy  in  a  wild  burst 
of  lyric  melody ;  a  haunter  of  the  muck  and  a  prober 
of  the  mud  suddenly  transformed  into  a  bird  that 
soars  and  circles  and  warbles  like  a  lark  hidden  or 
half  hidden  in  the  depths  of  the  twilight  sky.  The 
passion  of  the  spring  has  few  more  pleasing  exem- 
plars. The  madness  of  the  season,  the  abandon  of 
the  mating  instinct,  is  in  every  move  and  note. 
Ordinarily  the  woodcock  is  a  very  dull,  stupid  bird, 
with  a  look  almost  idiotic,  and  is  seldom  seen  except 
by  the  sportsman  or  the  tramper  along  marshy 
brooks.  But  for  a  brief  season  in  his  life  he  is  an 
inspired  creature,  a  winged  song  that  baffles  the  eye 
and  thrills  the  ear  from  the  mystic  regions  of  the 
upper  air. 

When  I  last  heard  it,  I  was  with  a  companion, 
and  our  attention  was  arrested,  as  we  were  skirting 
the  edge  of  a  sloping,  rather  marshy,  bowlder-strewn 
119 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

field,  by  the  "zeep,"  "zeep,"  which  the  bird  utters 
on  the  ground,  preliminary  to  its  lark-like  flight. 
We  paused  and  listened.  The  light  of  day  was  fast 
failing;  a  faint  murmur  went  up  from  the  fields 
below  us  that  defined  itself  now  and  then  in  the  good- 
night song  of  some  bird.  Now  it  was  the  lullaby  of 
the  song  sparrow  or  the  swamp  sparrow.  Once  the 
tender,  ringing,  infantile  voice  of  the  bush  sparrow 
stood  out  vividly  for  a  moment  on  that  great  back- 
ground of  silence.  "  Zeep,"  "  zeep,"  came  out  of  the 
dimness  six  or  eight  rods  away.  Presently  there  was 
a  faint,  rapid  whistling  of  wings,  and  my  companion 
said:  "There,  he  is  up."  The  ear  could  trace  his 
flight,  but  not  the  eye.  In  less  than  a  minute  the 
straining  ear  failed  to  catch  any  sound,  and  we  knew 
he  had  reached  his  climax  and  was  circling.  Once  we 
distinctly  saw  him  whirling  far  above  us.  Then  he 
was  lost  in  the  obscurity,  and  in  a  few  seconds  there 
rained  down  upon  us  the  notes  of  his  ecstatic  song 
—  a  novel  kind  of  hurried,  chirping,  smacking  war- 
ble. It  was  very  brief,  and  when  it  ceased,  we  knew 
the  bird  was  dropping  plummet-like  to  the  earth. 
In  half  a  minute  or  less  his  "zeep,"  "zeep,"  came 
up  again  from  the  ground.  In  two  or  three  minutes 
he  repeated  his  flight  and  song,  and  thus  kept  it  up 
during  the  half -hour  or  more  that  we  remained  to 
listen  :  now  a  harsh  plaint  out  of  the  obscurity  upon 
the  ground ;  then  a  jubilant  strain  from  out  the 
obscurity  of  the  air  above.  His  mate  was  probably 
120 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

somewhere  within  earshot,  and  we  wondered  just 
how  much  interest  she  took  in  the  performance. 
Was  it  all  for  her  benefit,  or  inspired  by  her  pre- 
sence ?  I  think,  rather,  it  was  inspired  by  the  May 
night,  by  the  springing  grass,  by  the  unfolding  leaves, 
by  the  apple  bloom,  by  the  passion  of  joy  and  love 
that  thrills  through  nature  at  this  season.  An  hour 
or  two  before,  we  had  seen  the  bobolinks  in  the 
meadow  beating  the  air  with  the  same  excited  wing 
and  overflowing  with  the  same  ecstasy  of  song,  but 
their  demure,  retiring,  and  indifferent  mates  were 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  male 
bird  sang,  not  to  win  his  mate,  but  to  celebrate  the 
winning,  to  invoke  the  young  who  are  not  yet  born, 
and  to  express  the  joy  of  love  which  is  at  the  heart 
of  nature. 

When  I  reached  home,  I  went  over  the  fourteen 
volumes  of  Thoreau's  Journal  to  see  if  he  had 
made  any  record  of  having  heard  the  "  woodcock's 
evening  hymn,"  as  Emerson  calls  it.  He  had  not. 
Evidently  he  never  heard  it,  which  is  the  more  sur- 
prising as  he  was  abroad  in  the  fields  and  marshes 
and  woods  at  almost  all  hours  in  the  twenty-four 
and  in  all  seasons  and  weathers,  making  it  the  busi- 
ness of  his  life  to  see  and  record  what  was  going  on 
in  nature. 

Thoreau's  eye  was  much  more  reliable  than  his 
ear.  He  saw  straight,  but  did  not  always  hear 
straight.  For  instance,  he  seems  always  to  have 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

confounded  the  song  of  the  hermit  thrush  with  that 
of  the  wood  thrush.  He  records  having  heard  the 
latter  even  in  April,  but  never  the  former.  In  the 
Maine  woods  and  on  Monadnock  it  is  always  the 
wood  thrush  which  he  hears,  and  never  the  hermit. 

But  if  Thoreau's  ear  was  sometimes  at  fault,  I 
do  not  recall  that  his  eye  ever  was,  while  his  mind 
was  always  honest.  He  had  an  instinct  for  the  truth, 
and  while  we  may  admit  that  the  truth  he  was  in 
quest  of  in  nature  was  not  always  scientific  truth,  or 
the  truth  of  natural  history,  but  was  often  the  truth 
of  the  poet  and  the  mystic,  yet  he  was  very  careful 
about  his  facts;  he  liked  to  be  able  to  make  an 
exact  statement,  to  clinch  his  observations  by  going 
again  and  again  to  the  spot.  He  never  taxes  your 
credulity.  He  had  never  been  bitten  by  the  mad 
dog  of  sensationalism  that  has  bitten  certain  of  our 
later  nature  writers. 

Thoreau  made  no  effort  to  humanize  the  animals. 
What  he  aimed  mainly  to  do  was  to  invest  his  ac- 
count of  them  with  literary  charm,  not  by  imputing 
to  them  impossible  things,  but  by  describing  them 
in  a  way  impossible  to  a  less  poetic  nature.  The 
novel  and  the  surprising  are  not  in  the  act  of  the 
bird  or  beast  itself,  but  in  Thoreau's  way  of  telling 
what  it  did.  To  draw  upon  your  imagination  for 
your  facts  is  one  thing ;  to  draw  upon  your  imagi- 
nation in  describing  what  you  see  is  quite  another. 
The  new  school  of  nature  writers  will  afford  many 


STRAIGHT  SEEING  AND  THINKING 

samples  of  the  former  method ;  read  Thoreau's  de- 
scription of  the  wood  thrush's  song  or  the  bobolink's 
song,  or  his  account  of  wild  apples,  or  of  his  life 
at  Walden  Pond,  or  almost  any  other  bit  of  his  writ- 
ing, for  a  sample  of  the  latter.  In  his  best  work  he 
uses  language  in  the  imaginative  way  of  the  poet. 

Literature  and  science  do  not  differ  in  matters 
of  fact,  but  in  spirit  and  method.  There  is  no  live 
literature  without  a  play  of  personality,  and  there  is 
no  exact  science  without  the  clear,  white  light  of  the 
understanding.  What  we  want,  and  have  a  right 
to  expect,  of  the  literary  naturalist  is  that  his  state- 
ment shall  have  both  truth  and  charm,  but  we  do 
not  want  the  charm  at  the  expense  of  the  truth.  I 
may  invest  the  commonest  fact  I  observe  in  the  fields 
or  by  the  roadside  with  the  air  of  romance,  if  I  can, 
but  I  am  not  to  put  the  romance  in  place  of  the  fact. 
If  you  romance  about  the  animals,  you  must  do  so 
unequivocally,  as  Kipling  does  and  as  ^Esop  did ; 
the  fiction  must  declare  itself  at  once,  or  the  work  is 
vicious.  To  make  literature  out  of  natural  history 
observation  is  not  to  pervert  or  distort  the  facts, 
or  to  draw  the  long  bow  at  all ;  it  is  to  see  the  facts 
in  their  true  relations  and  proportions  and  with 
honest  emotion. 

Truth  of  seeing  and  truth  of  feeling  are  the  main 
requisite :  add  truth  of  style,  and  the  thing  is  done. 


VII 
HUMAN   TRAITS    IN   THE   ANIMALS 

r  1 1HAT  there  is  a  deal  of  human  nature  in  the 
JL  lower  animals  is  a  very  obvious  fact;  or  we 
may  turn  the  proposition  around  and  say,  with 
equal  truth,  that  there  is  a  deal  of  animal  nature  in 
us  humans.  If  man  is  of  animal  origin,  as  we  are 
now  all  coming  to  believe,  how  could  this  be  other- 
wise ?  We  are  all  made  of  one  stuff,  the  functions 
of  our  bodies  are  practically  the  same,  and  the 
workings  of  our  instincts  and  our  emotional  and 
involuntary  natures  are  in  many  ways  identical. 
I  am  not  now  thinking  of  any  part  or  lot  which  the 
lower  orders  may  have  in  our  intellectual  or  moral 
life,  a  point  upon  which,  as  my  reader  may  know,  I 
diverge  from  the  popular  conception  of  these  mat- 
ters, but  of  the  extent  in  which  they  share  with  us 
the  ground  or  basement  story  of  the  house  of  life 
—  certain  fundamental  traits,  instincts,  and  blind 
gropings. 

Man  is  a  bundle  of  instincts,  impulses,  predi- 
lections, race   and   family    affinities,  and  antago- 
nisms, supplemented  by  the  gift  of  reason  —  a  gift 
of  which  he  sometimes  makes  use.  The  animal  is 
125 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

a  bundle  of  instincts,  impulses,  affinities,  appetites, 
and  race  traits,  without  the  extra  gift  of  reason. 

The  animal  has  sensation,  perception,  and  power 
of  association,  and  these  suffice  it.  Man  has  sen- 
sation, perception,  memory,  comparison,  ideality, 
judgment,  and  the  like,  which  suffice  him. 

There  can  be  no  dispute,  I  suppose,  as  to  certain 
emotions  and  impulses  being  exclusively  human, 
such  as  awe,  veneration,  humility,  reverence,  self- 
sacrifice,  shame,  modesty,  and  many  others  that  are 
characteristic  of  what  we  call  our  moral  nature. 
Then  there  are  certain  others  that  we  share  with  our 
dumb  neighbors  —  curiosity,  jealousy,  joy,  anger, 
sex  love,  the  maternal  and  paternal  instinct,  the  in- 
stinct of  fear,  of  self-preservation,  and  so  forth. 

There  is  at  least  one  instinct  or  faculty  that  the 
animals  have  far  more  fully  developed  than  we 
have  —  the  homing  instinct,  which  seems  to  imply 
a  sense  of  direction  that  we  have  not.  We  have  lost 
it  because  we  have  other  faculties  to  take  its  place, 
just  as  we  have  lost  that  acute  sense  of  smell  that 
is  so  marvelously  developed  in  many  of  the  four- 
footed  creatures.  It  has  long  been  a  contention  of 
mine  that  the  animals  all  possess  the  knowledge 
and  intelligence  which  is  necessary  to  their  self- 
preservation  and  the  perpetuity  of  the  species,  and 
that  is  about  all.  This  homing  instinct  seems  to  be 
one  of  the  special  powers  that  the  animals  cannot 
get  along  without.  If  the  solitary  wasp,  for  instance, 
126 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

could  not  find  her  way  back  to  that  minute  spot  in 
the  field  where  her  nest  is  made,  a  feat  quite  im- 
possible to  you  or  me,  so  indistinguishable  to  our 
eye  is  that  square  inch  of  ground  in  which  her  hole 
is  made ;  or  if  the  fur  seal  could  not  in  spring  re- 
trace its  course  to  the  islands  upon  which  it  breeds, 
through  a  thousand  leagues  of  pathless  sea  water, 
how  soon  the  tribe  of  each  would  perish ! 

The  animal  is,  like  the  skater,  a  marvel  of  skill  in 
one  field  or  element,  or  in  certain  fixed  conditions, 
while  man's  varied  but  less  specialized  powers 
make  him  at  home  in  many  fields.  Some  of  the  ani- 
mals outsee  man,  outsmell  him,  outhear  him,  out- 
run him,  outswim  him,  because  their  lives  depend 
more  upon  these  special  powers  than  his  does ;  but 
he  can  outwit  them  all  because  he  has  the  resource- 
fulness of  reason,  and  is  at  home  in  many  different 
fields.  The  condor  "houses  herself  with  the  sky" 
that  she  may  have  a  high  point  of  observation  for 
the  exercise  of  that  marvelous  power  of  vision.  An 
object  in  the  landscape  beneath  that  would  escape 
the  human  eye  is  revealed  to  the  soaring  buzzard. 
It  stands  these  birds  in  hand  to  see  thus  sharply; 
their  dinner  depends  upon  it.  If  mine  depended 
upon  such  powers  of  vision,  in  the  course  of  time 
I  might  come  to  possess  it.  I  am  not  certain  but 
that  we  have  lost  another  power  that  I  suspect  the 
lower  animals  possess  —  something  analogous  to,  or 
identical  with,  what  we  call  telepathy  —  power  to 
127 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

> 
communicate  without  words,  or  signs,  or  signals. 

There  are  many  things  in  animal  life,  such  as  the 
precise  concert  of  action  among  flocks  of  birds  and 
fishes  and  insects,  and,  at  times,  the  unity  of  im- 
pulse among  land  animals,  that  give  support  to  the 
notion  that  the  wild  creatures  in  some  way  come  to 
share  one  another's  mental  or  emotional  states  to  a 
degree  and  in  a  way  that  we  know  little  or  nothing  of. 
It  seems  important  to  their  well-being  that  they 
should  have  such  a  gift  —  something  to  make  good 
to  them  the  want  of  language  and  mental  concepts, 
and  insure  unity  of  action  in  the  tribe.  Their  sea- 
sonal migrations  from  one  part  of  the  country  to 
another  are  no  doubt  the  promptings  of  an  inborn 
instinct  called  into  action  in  all  by  the  recurrence  of 
the  same  outward  conditions ;  but  the  movements 
of  the  flock  or  the  school  seem  to  imply  a  common 
impulse  that  is  awakened  on  the  instant  in  each 
member  of  the  flock.  The  animals  have  no  systems 
or  methods  in  the  sense  that  we  have,  but  like  con- 
ditions with  them  always  awaken  like  impulses,  and 
unity  of  action  is  reached  without  outward  com- 
munication. 

The  lower  animals  seem  to  have  certain  of  our  foi- 
bles, and  antagonisms,  and  unreasoning  petulancies. 
I  was  reminded  of  this  in  reading  the  story  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  tells  of  a  Colorado  bear  he  once 
watched  at  close  quarters.  The  bear  was  fussing 
around  a  carcass  of  a  deer,  preparatory  to  burying 
128 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

it.  "  Once  the  bear  lost  his  grip  and  rolled  over  dur- 
ing the  course  of  some  movement,  and  this  made 
him  angry  and  he  struck  the  carcass  a  savage 
whack,  just  as  a  pettish  child  will  strike  a  table 
against  which  it  has  knocked  itself."  Who  does 
not  recognize  that  trait  in  himself :  the  disposition 
to  vent  one's  anger  upon  inanimate  things  —  upon 
his  hat,  for  instance,  when  the  wind  snatches  it  off 
his  head  and  drops  it  in  the  mud  or  leads  him  a 
chase  for  it  across  the  street ;  or  upon  the  stick  that 
tripped  him  up,  or  the  beam  against  which  he 
bumped  his  head  ?  We  do  not  all  carry  our  anger 
so  far  as  did  a  little  three-year-old  maiden  I  heard 
of,  who,  on  tripping  over  the  rockers  of  her  chair, 
promptly  picked  herself  up,  and  carrying  the  chair 
to  a  closet,  pushed  it  in  and  spitefully  shut  the 
door  on  it,  leaving  it  alone  in  the  dark  to  repent  its 
wrong-doing. 

Our  blind,  unreasoning  animal  anger  is  excited 
by  whatever  opposes  or  baffles  us.  Of  course,  when 
we  yield  to  the  anger,  we  do  not  act  as  reasonable 
beings,  but  as  the  unreasoning  animals.  It  is  hard 
for  one  to  control  this  feeling  when  the  opposi- 
tion comes  from  some  living  creature,  as  a  balky 
horse  or  a  kicking  cow,  or  a  pig  that  will  not  be 
driven  through  the  open  gate.  When  I  was  a  boy,  I 
once  saw  one  of  my  uncles  kick  a  hive  of  bees  off 
the  stand  and  halfway  across  the  yard,  because  the 
bees  stung  him  when  he  was  about  to  "take  them 
129 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

up."  I  confess  to  a  fair  share  of  this  petulant,  un- 
reasoning animal  or  human  trait,  whichever  it  may 
be,  myself.  It  is  difficult  for  me  to  refrain  from  jump- 
ing upon  my  hat  when,  in  my  pursuit  of  it  across 
the  street,  it  has  escaped  me  two  or  three  times  just 
as  I  was  about  to  put  my  hand  upon  it,  and  as  for 
a  balky  horse  or  a  kicking  cow,  I  never  could  trust 
myself  to  deal  reasonably  with  them.  Follow  this 
feeling  back  a  few  thousand  years,  and  we  reach  the 
time  when  our  forbears  looked  upon  all  the  forces 
in  nature  as  in  league  against  them.  The  anger  of 
the  gods  as  shown  in  storms  and  winds  and  pesti- 
lence and  defeat  is  a  phase  of  the  same  feeling.  A 
wild  animal  caught  in  a  steel  trap  vents  its  wrath 
upon  the  bushes  and  sticks  and  trees  and  rocks 
within  its  reach.  Something  is  to  blame,  something 
baffles  it  and  gives  it  pain,  and  its  teeth  and  claws 
seek  every  near  object.  Of  course  it  is  a  blind 
manifestation  of  the  instinct  of  self-defense,  just 
as  was  my  uncle's  act  when  he  kicked  over  his  bee- 
hive, or  as  is  the  angler's  impatience  when  his  line 
gets  tangled  and  his  hook  gets  fast.  If  the  Colorado 
bear  caught  his  fish  with  a  hook  and  line,  how  many 
times  would  he  lose  his  temper  during  the  day! 

I  do  not  think  many  animals  show  their  kinship 
to  us  by  exhibiting  the  trait  I  am  here  discussing. 
Probably  birds  do  not  show  it  at  all.  I  have  seen  a 
nest-building  robin  baffled  and  delayed,  day  after 
day,  by  the  wind  that  swept  away  the  straws  and 
130 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

rubbish  she  carried  to  the  top  of  a  timber  under  my 
porch.  But  she  did  not  seem  to  lose  her  temper. 
She  did  not  spitefully  reclaim  the  straws  and  strings 
that  would  persist  in  falling  to  the  porch  floors, 
but  cheerfully  went  away  in  search  of  more.  So  I 
have  seen  a  wood  thrush  time  after  time  carrying 
the  same  piece  of  paper  to  a  branch  from  which  the 
breeze  dislodged  it,  without  any  evidence  of  impa- 
tience. It  is  true  that  when  a  string  or  a  horsehair 
which  a  bird  is  carrying  to  its  nest  gets  caught  in 
a  branch,  the  bird  tugs  at  it  again  and  again  to  free 
it  from  entanglement,  but  I  have  never  seen  any 
evidence  of  impatience  or  spite  against  branch  or 
string,  as  would  be  pretty  sure  to  be  the  case  did 
my  string  show  such  a  spirit  of  perversity.  Why 
your  dog  bites  the  stone  which  you  roll  for  him 
when  he  has  found  it,  or  gnaws  the  stick  you  throw, 
is  not  quite  clear,  unless  it  be  from  the  instinct  of 
his  primitive  ancestors  to  bite  and  kill  the  game 
run  down  in  the  chase.  Or  is  the  dog  trying  to  pun- 
ish the  stick  or  stone  because  it  will  not  roll  or  fly 
for  him  ?  The  dog  is  often  quick  to  resent  a  kick, 
be  it  from  man  or  beast,  but  I  have  never  known 
him  to  show  anger  at  the  door  that  slammed  to 
and  hit  him.  Probably,  if  the  door  held  him  by  his 
tail  or  his  limb,  it  would  quickly  receive  the  imprint 
of  his  teeth. 

In  reading  Bostock  on  the  "Training  of  Wild 
Animals,"  my  attention  was  arrested  by  the  remark 
131 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

-  that  his  performing  lions  and  tigers  are  liable  to 
suffer  from  "  stage  fright,"  like  ordinary  mortals,  but 
that  "  once  thoroughly  accustomed  to  the  stage,  they 
seem  to  find  in  it  a  sort  of  intoxication  well  known 
to  a  species  higher  in  the  order  of  nature ; "  and 
furthermore,  that  "nearly  all  trainers  assert  that 
animals  are  affected  by  the  attitude  of  an  audience, 
that  they  are  stimulated  by  the  applause  of  an  en- 
thusiastic house,  and  perform  indifferently  before  a 
cold  audience."  If  all  this  is  not  mere  fancy,  but  is 
really  a  fact  capable  of  verification,  it  shows  another 
human  trait  in  animals  that  one  would  not  expect 
to  find  there.  Bears  seem  to  show  more  human 
nature  than  most  other  animals.  Bostock  says  that 
they  evidently  love  to  show  off  before  an  audience : 
"The  conceit  and  good  opinion  of  themselves, 
which  some  performing  bears  have,  is  absolutely 
ridiculous."  A  trainer  once  trained  a  young  bear 
to  climb  a  ladder  and  set  free  the  American  flag, 
and  so  proud  did  the  bear  become  of  his  accom- 
plishment, that  whenever  any  one  was  looking  on  he 
would  go  through  the  whole  performance  by  him- 
self, "  evidently  simply  for  the  pleasure  of  doing  it." 
Of  course  there  is  room  for  much  fancy  here  on  the 
part  of  the  spectator,  but  bears  are  in  so  many  ways 
—  in  their  play,  in  their  boxing,  in  their  walking  — 
such  grotesque  parodies  of  man,  that  one  is  induced 
to  accept  the  trainer's  statements  as  containing  a 
measure  of  truth. 

132 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

The  preeminent  danger  of  the  animal  trainer 
comes  under  the  same  conditions  that  it  would 
probably  come  to  him  were  he  a  trainer  of  wild  men, 
to  wit,  when  he  stumbles  or  falls.  In  such  a  case, 
the  lion  or  tiger  is  very  apt  to  spring  upon  him. 
These  beasts  seem  to  know  that  a  man  is  less  for- 
midable when  down  than  when  standing;  when 
prone  upon  the  ground,  his  power  has  departed. 
They  «also,  like  the  human  savage,  often  seize  the 
opportunity  for  an  attack  upon  him  when  his  back 
is  turned.  A  bold,  threatening  front  cows  an  animal 
as  it  cows  a  man.  The  least  sign  of  fear  or  of  hesi- 
tation on  the  part  of  the  trainer,  and  he  is  in  danger. 
Self-confidence,  self-control,  an  authoritative  man- 
ner, count  for  just  as  much  in  our  dealing  with  the 
animals  as  with  men.  How  a  bold,  unhesitating 
manner  will  carry  you  through  a  pack  of  threaten- 
ing dogs,  while  timidity  or  parleying  endangers  your 
calves !  Act  as  though  you  were  the  rightful  master 
of  the  place  and  had  come  to  give  orders,  and  the 
most  threatening  watch-dog  gives  way.  Flee  from 
a  mad  bull,  a  cross  dog,  a  butting  sheep,  and  your 
danger  is  vastly  increased.  Even  an  insolent  rooster 
or  a  bellicose  gander  will  strike  you  then.  I  have 
found  that  the  best  way  to  deal  with  the  hive  bee 
is  by  a  bold  and  decisive  manner.  I  would  even 
recommend  the  same  course  with  yellow -jackets ; 
if  you  are  bent  on  demolishing  their  nest,  do  it  by 
a  sudden  bold  stroke,  and  not  by  timid  approaches. 
133 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

All  kinds  of  bees  seem  disconcerted  by  a  sudden 
onslaught. 

Another  human  trait  that  seems  almost  universal 
among  the  lower  animals  is  the  coyness  and  reluc- 
tance of  the  female  in  her  relations  to  the  male.  Her 
first  impulse  is  to  refuse  and  to  flee.  She  is  nega- 
tive as  the  male  is  positive.  Among  the  birds  there 
is  something  like  regular  courtship,  there  is  rivalry 
and  jealousy  and  hostile  collision  on  the  part  of 
both  sexes.  With  the  birds,  the  propagating  instinct 
in  the  female  is  evidently  not  subject  to  the  same 
law  of  recurring  intervals  that  it  is  among  mammals. 
Hence  the  female  must  be  stimulated  and  won  by 
the  male.  He  addresses  himself  to  her  in  a  way  that 
is  quite  exceptional,  if  it  occurs  at  all,  among  mam- 
mals. His  aim  seems  to  be  to  kindle  or  quicken  her 
sexual  and  mating  impulses.  In  the  case  of  mam- 
mals, these  impulses  recur  at  certain  periods,  and 
no  courtship  on  the  part  of  the  male  is  necessary. 

Just  what  part  the  gay  plumes  and  the  extra  ap- 
pendages of  the  males  play  in  bird  courtship  I  have 
discussed  elsewhere.  I  think  it  is  highly  probable 
that  the  bright  colors  and  ornamental  plumes  of  the 
male  react  upon  him,  excite  him,  and  increase  his 
pride,  his  courage,  and  the  impetuosity  of  his  ad- 
dress. The  birds  that  dance  and  perform  before  the 
females,  during  the  breeding  season,  seem  to  show 
more  and  more  excitement  as  the  dance  proceeds, 
apparently  intoxicated  by  their  own  ardor.  Just 
134 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

what  determines  the  choice  of  the  male  and  sets  him 
in  pursuit  of  a  particular  female  is  a  question  that 
greatly  interests  me.  Does  the  matter  turn  upon 
some  complementary  variation  too  subtle  for  us  to 
perceive  ?  The  mating  of  birds  certainly  seems  like 
an  act  of  choice;  but  just  what  determines  it,  how 
shall  we  find  that  out  ?  Behold  the  sparrows  in  the 
street,  three  or  four  males  apparently  in  a  scrim- 
mage with  one  female,  surrounding  her  and  play- 
fully assaulting  her,  with  spread  plumage  and  ani- 
mated chirping  and  chattering,  while  she,  the  centre 
of  the  group,  strikes  right  and  left,  in  a  serious,  angry 
mood,  at  her  would-be  suitors.  What  does  it  mean  ? 
Or,  the  robins  in  the  spring,  rushing  across  the  lawn 
and  forming  sudden  rough-and-tumble  groups  with 
a  struggling  and  indignant  female  in  the  centre,  or 
gleefully  screaming,  and  quickly  and  apparently 
amicably  separating  ?  In  all  such  cases  the  hen  bird 
alone  wears  an  angry  and  insulted  air.  What  indig- 
nity has  been  put  upon  her  ?  I  know  of  nothing  in 
human  courtship  analogous  to  this  tumultuous  and 
hilarious  pursuit  of  the  females  by  the  cock  spar- 
rows and  robins. 

The  gregarious  instinct  of  birds  and  mammals 
does  not  differ  essentially,  as  I  see,  from  the  same 
instinct  in  man,  except  that  in  man  it  is  often  for 
cooperation  or  mutual  protection,  while  with  the 
lower  animals  it  seems  purely  social.  Many  birds 
flock  in  the  fall  and  winter  that  live  in  pairs  during 
135 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

the  summer.  Crows,  for  instance,  have  their  rook- 
eries, where  vast  numbers  congregate  to  pass  the 
winter  nights,  and  they  usually  keep  in  bands  or 
loose  flocks  during  the  winter  days.  Apparently, 
this  clannishness  in  winter  is  for  social  cheer  and 
good-fellowship  alone.  As  they  roost  in  naked, 
exposed  treetops,  they  could  not,  it  seems  to  me, 
perceptibly  shield  one  another  from  the  cold ;  while 
it  is  reasonable  to  think  that  the  greater  scarcity 
of  food  at  this  season  would  naturally  cause  them 
to  scatter.  But  the  centripetal  force,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  social  instinct,  triumphs  over  all  else.  Many 
species  of  our  birds  flock  in  the  fall  —  the  various 
blackbirds,  the  cedar-birds,  the  goldfinches,  the 
siskins,  the  snowbirds,  the  tree  and  bank  swallows, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  waterfowl  —  some  to  migrate 
and  some  to  pass  the  winter  here.  In  similar  condi- 
tions or  similar  stress  of  circumstances,  human 
beings  would  probably  act  in  a  similar  way;  we 
should  migrate  in  herds,  or  face  some  common 
calamity  in  large  aggregates. 

Indeed,  the  social  instinct  seems  radically  the 
same  in  all  forms  of  animal  life.  The  loneliness  of 
a  domestic  animal  separated  from  the  herd,  the 
homesickness  of  a  dog  or  a  horse  when  removed 
to  a  strange  place,  do  not  seem  to  differ  very  much 
from  the  feelings  we  experience  under  like  circum- 
stances. Attachment  to  places,  attachment  to  per- 
sons, attachment  to  one  another,  to  home  and  to 
136 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

mate  —  these  feelings  seem  about  the  same  in  kind 
among  all  creatures.  Of  course  they  are  more  com- 
plex; far-reaching,  and  abiding  in  man  than  in 
the  animals  below  him,  but  their  genesis  seems 
the  same. 

Among  both  birds  and  four-footed  beasts,  the 
maternal  affection  is  doubtless  greater  than  the 
paternal,  and  this  also  is  human.  But  how  brief 
and  fugitive  the  affection  is,  compared  with  the 
same  attachment  in  our  own  species !  —  of  a  few 
weeks'  duration  among  our  common  birds,  and  a 
few  months  or  a  year  among  the  mammals,  but 
always  as  long  as  the  well-being  of  the  young  re- 
quires it.  When  they  become  self-supporting,  the 
parental  affection  ceases.  And  in  a  limited  sense 
this  is  true  in  our  own  case. 

If  a  bird  loses  its  mate  during  the  breeding  sea- 
son, the  period  of  mourning  and  waiting  is  very 
brief,  usually  not  more  than  a  day  or  two.  The 
need  of  rearing  a  family  is  urgent,  and  nature  wastes 
no  time  in  unavailing  regrets.  Just  how  the  be- 
reaved mate  makes  her  or  his  wants  known,  I  never 
could  find  out;  but  it  seems  there  are  always  not 
far  off  some  unmated  birds  of  both  sexes  that  are 
ready  to  step  in  and  complete  the  circle  once  more. 
From  sparrows  to  eagles,  this  seems  to  be  the 
rule. 

With  what  species,  if  any,  the  marriage  unions 
last  during  life,  I  do  not  know.  Neither  do  I  know 
137 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

if  anything  like  divorce,  or  unfaithfulness,  or  free 
love,  ever  takes  place  among  the  monogamous 
birds  —  probably  not.  The  riot  of  the  breeding 
instinct  in  the  males  confines  itself  to  gay  plumes, 
or  songs,  or  grotesque  antics,  while  the  seriousness 
and  preoccupation  of  the  female,  I  doubt  not, 
would  prove  an  effectual  warning  to  any  gay  Lo- 
thario among  her  neighbors,  if  such  there  happened 
to  be. 

I  am  convinced  that  birds  have  a  sense  of  home, 
or  something  analogous  to  it,  and  that  they  return 
year  after  year  to  the  same  localities  to  nest.  The 
few  cases  where  I  have  been  able  to  identify  the 
particular  sparrow  or  robin  or  bluebird  confirm 
me  in  this  belief. 

Hermits  among  the  birds  or  beasts  are  probably 
very  rare,  and  I  doubt  if  voluntary  seclusion  ever 
occurs.  Sometimes  an  old  male,  vanquished  and 
in  a  measure  disabled  by  his  younger  rivals,  may 
be  driven  out  of  the  herd  or  pack  and  compelled 
to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  comparative 
solitude.  Or  an  old  eagle  that  has  lost  its  mate 
may  spend  its  days  henceforth  alone.  The  birds  of 
prey,  like  the  animals  of  prey,  and  like  prowlers  and 
bloodsuckers  generally,  are  solitary  in  their  habits. 

The  feeling  of  hostility  towards  strangers  that 
all  animals  manifest  in  varying  degrees,  how  dis- 
tinctly we  can  trace  it  up  through  the  savage  races 
and  through  the  lower  orders  of  our  social  aggre- 
138 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

gates,  till  it  quite  fades  out  in  the  more  highly  civ- 
ilized communities! 

Animals  experience  grief  over  the  loss  of  their 
young,  but  not  over  the  death  of  a  member  of 
their  flock  or  tribe.  Death  itself  seems  to  have  no 
meaning  to  them.  When  a  bird  seems  to  mourn 
for  its  lost  mate,  its  act  is  probably  the  outcry  of 
the  breeding  instinct  which  has  been  thwarted. 

Do  the  birds  and  mammals  sympathize  with  one 
another  ?  When  one  bird  utters  a  cry  of  distress,  the 
birds  of  other  species  within  hearing  will  hasten 
to  the  spot  and  join  in  the  cry  —  at  least  in  the 
breeding  season.  I  have  no  proof  that  they  will  do 
it  at  other  times.  And  I  do  not  call  this  sympathy, 
but  simply  the  alarm  of  the  parental  instinct,  which 
at  this  season  is  very  sensitive.  The  alarm-cry  of 
many  birds  will  often  put  four-footed  animals  on 
the  lookout.  The  language  of  distress  and  alarm 
is  a  universal  language,  which  all  creatures  under- 
stand more  or  less.  But  I  doubt  if  sympathy  as  we 
know  it  —  the  keen  appreciation  of  the  suffering 
or  the  misfortune  of  another,  which  implies  power 
in  a  measure  to  put  ourselves  in  that  other's  place 
—  even  in  its  rudimentary  form,  exists  among  the 
lower  orders.  Among  the  domestic  fowls,  a  cry  of 
distress  from  one  of  them  usually  alarms  the  others : 
a  cry  from  a  chicken  brings  the  mother  hen  to  the 
rescue;  this  is  the  maternal  instinct,  and  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation  which  all  animals  must  have  or 
139 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

their  race  would  perish.  A  certain  agonized  call 
from  a  member  of  a  herd  of  cattle  will  at  once 
bring  the  other  members  to  the  spot,  with  uplifted 
heads  and  threatening  horns.  This,  again,  is  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation.  This,  I  say,  animals 
must  have,  but  they  do  not  have  to  have  sympathy 
any  more  than  they  have  to  have  veneration,  or 
humility,  or  the  aesthetic  sense.  But  fear  —  think 
how  important  this  is  to  them —  blind,  unreasoning 
fear,  but  always  alert  and  suspicious. 

Fear  in  the  human  species  is  undoubtedly  of 
animal  origin.  How  acute  it  often  is  in  young  chil- 
dren —  the  fear  of  the  dark,  of  the  big,  of  the 
strange,  and  of  the  unusual !  The  first  fear  I  myself 
remember  was  that  of  an  open  door  at  night  leading 
into  a  dark  room.  What  a  horror  I  felt  at  that  mys- 
terious cavernous  darkness !  —  and  this  without  any 
idea  of  the  danger  that  might  lurk  there.  The  next 
fear  I  recall  was  a  kind  of  panic,  when  I  was  prob- 
ably three  or  four  years  of  age,  at  the  sight  of  a  hen- 
hawk  sailing  against  the  sky  above  me.  I  hurriedly 
climbed  over  the  wall  and  hid  behind  it.  Later, 
when  I  was  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age,  my  fear  took 
a  less  animal  form  —  a  fear  of  spooks  and  hob- 
goblins, induced,  no  doubt,  by  the  fearsome  super- 
stitions of  my  elders.  Now  I  am  not  conscious  of 
any  physical  or  superstitious  fears,  but  there  is 
plenty  of  moral  cowardice  left.  My  little  grand- 
daughter, when  two  and  a  half  years  old,  was 
140 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

filled  with  terror  of  the  sea  as  she  saw  it  for  the 
first  time  from  the  beach. 

Fear  seems  to  have  the  same  effect  upon  both 
man  and  beast,  causing  trembling  of  the  muscles, 
a  rapid  beating  of  the  heart,  a  relaxation  of  the 
sphincters,  momentary  weakness,  confusion,  panic, 
flight.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  if  the  blood 
leaves  the  capillaries  in  the  faces  of  animals  during 
sudden  fright,  as  it  does  in  man,  producing  paleness. 

The  panic  that  sometimes  seizes  a  multitude  of 
animals,  resulting  in  a  stampede,  a  blind,  furious 
rush  away  from  the  real  or  the  imaginary  danger, 
seems  to  differ  but  little  from  that  which  at  times 
seizes  the  human  multitude  in  theatre,  or  circus, 
or  on  the  field  of  battle.  It  is  a  kind  of  madness, 
augmented  and  intensified  by  numbers.  The  con- 
tagion of  fear  works  among  all  creatures,  like  the 
contagion  of  joy,  or  anger,  or  any  other  sudden 
impulse.  These  things  are  "  catching;"  an  emotional 
state  in  one  man  or  one  animal  tends  to  beget  the 
same  state  in  all  other  near-by  men  or  animals, 
either  through  imitation,  or  through  some  psychic 
law  not  well  understood.  Like  begets  like  through- 
out nature.  Just  as  our  bodily  temperature  rises  in 
a  crowd,  so  does  that  psychic  state  become  more 
acute  in  which  we  are  liable  to  sudden  enthusiasms 
or  panic,  fear  or  animal  cruelty.  Mobs  are  guilty 
of  things,  especially  in  the  way  of  violence,  that  the 
separate  members  of  them  would  never  think  of 
141 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

doing,  just  as  nations  and  corporations  will  exhibit 
a  meanness  and  hoggishness  that  would  shame  the 
individuals  composing  them. 

It  is  a  question  whether  or  not  the  lower  animals 
ever  experience  the  feeling  we  know  as  revenge  — 
that  they  cherish  a  hatred  or  a  secret  enmity  toward 
one  of  their  own  kind  or  toward  a  person,  in  the 
absence  of  that  person  or  fellow.  Their  power  of 
association,  which  is  undoubted,  would  call  up  the 
old  anger  on  the  sight  of  an  object  that  had  in- 
jured them,  but  they  probably  do  not  in  the  mean- 
time carry  any  feeling  of  ill-will  as  we  do,  because 
they  do  not  form  mental  concepts.  And  yet  I  have 
known  things  to  happen  that  point  that  way.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  blue  jay  destroys  the  eggs  of 
other  birds.  One  day  I  found  a  nest  of  a  blue  jay 
with  its  five  eggs  freshly  punctured  —  each  egg  with 
a  small  hole  in  it  as  if  made  by  the  beak  of  a  small 
bird,  as  it  doubtless  had  been.  Was  this  revenge  on 
the  part  of  some  victim  of  the  jay's  ?  One  can  only 
conjecture.  Roosevelt  tells  this  curiously  human  an- 
ecdote of  a  bear.  A  female  grizzly  was  found  by  a 
hunter  lying  across  a  game  trail  in  the  woods.  The 
hunter  shot  the  bear  as  she  was  about  to  charge 
him,  and  on  examining  the  spot  where  she  had  been 
lying,  he  found  that  it  was  the  freshly  made  grave 
of  her  cub.  He  conjectured  that  a  male  grizzly  or 
a  cougar  had  killed  the  cub  in  the  absence  of  the 
mother,  and  that  on  her  return  she  had  buried  it, 
142 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

and  had  lain  down  upon  the  grave  waiting  to  wreak 
her  vengeance  upon  the  murderer  of  her  young. 
But  this  may  be  only  the  plausible  human  interpre- 
tation of  the  fact.  Just  what  the  bear's  state  of  mind 
was,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing. 

The  dog  undoubtedly  exhibits  more  human  traits 
than  any  other  lower  animal,  and  this  by  reason  of 
his  long  association  with  man.  There  are  few  of 
our  ordinary  emotions  that  the  dog  does  not  share, 
as  joy,  fun,  love  of  adventure,  jealousy,  suspicion, 
comradeship,  helpfulness,  guilt,  covetousness,  and 
the  like,  or  feelings  analogous  to  these  —  the  dog 
version  of  them.  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  dog 
is  capable  of  contempt.  The  behavior  at  times  of 
a  large  dog  toward  a  small,  the  slights  he  will  put 
upon  him,  even  ejecting  his  urine  upon  him,  is 
hardly  capable  of  any  other  interpretation.  The 
forbearance,  too,  which  a  large  dog  usually  shows 
toward  a  touchy  little  whiffet,  never  resenting  its 
impudent  attacks,  is  very  human.  "  A  barking  dog 
never  bites  "  is  an  old  saying  founded  upon  human 
nature  as  well  as  upon  dog  nature.  The  noisy 
blusterer  is  rarely  dangerous,  whether  man  or  dog. 
I  do  not  agree  with  Stevenson  that  the  dog  is  a 
snob.  The  key  to  a  dog's  heart  is  kindness.  He 
will  always  meet  you  halfway  and  more.  I  have 
been  asked  why  the  farm  dog  usually  shows  such 
hostility  to  tramps  and  all  disreputable-looking  per- 
sons. It  is  not  their  looks  that  disturb  the  dog,  but 
143 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

their  smell  —  a  strange,  unknown  odor.  This  at 
once  puts  him  on  his  guard  and  excites  his  enmity. 
There  is  little  speculation  in  the  eye  of  a  dog,  but 
his  nose  is  keen  and  analytical. 

The  dog,  through  his  long  intercourse  with  man, 
has  become  charged  with  our  human  quality,  as  steel 
is  charged  by  a  magnet.  Yet  I  am  told  that  a  tame 
wolf  or  a  tame  fox  fawns  and  wags  his  tail  and 
tries  to  lick  his  master's  face,  the  same  as  the  dog. 
At  any  rate,  the  dog  does  many  things  that  we  can 
name  only  in  terms  applicable  to  ourselves.  My  dog 
coaxes  me  to  go  for  a  walk,  he  coaxes  me  to  get 
upon  my  lap,  he  coaxes  for  the  food  I  am  eating. 
When  I  upbraid  him,  he  looks  repentant  and 
humiliated.  When  I  whip  him,  he  cries,  when  I 
praise  him,  he  bounds,  when  I  greet  him  in  the 
morning,  he  whines  with  joy.  It  is  not  the  words 
that  count  with  him,  it  is  the  tone  of  the  voice. 

When  I  start  out  for  a  walk,  he  waits  and  dances 
about  till  he  sees  which  way  I  am  going.  It  seems 
as  if  he  must  at  such  times  have  some  sort  of  mental 
process  similar  to  my  own  under  like  circumstances. 
Or  is  his  whole  behavior  automatic  —  his  attitude 
of  eagerness,  expectancy,  inquiry,  and  all  ?  as  auto- 
matic as  the  wagging  of  his  tail  when  he  is  pleased, 
or  as  his  bristling  up  when  he  is  angry  ?  It  evinces 
some  sort  of  mental  action,  but  the  nature  of  it  is 
hard  to  divine.  When  he  sits  looking  vaguely  out 
upon  the  landscape,  or  rests  his  chin  upon  his  paws 
144 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

and  gazes  into  the  fire,  I  wish  I  knew  if  there  were 
anything  like  currents  of  thought,  or  reminiscences, 
or  anticipations  passing  through  his  mind.  When  I 
speak  sternly  to  him  and  he  cowers  down  or  throws 
himself  on  his  back  and  puts  up  his  paws  plead- 
ingly, I  wish  I  knew  just  the  state  of  his  mind  then. 
One  day  my  dog  deserted  me  while  I  was  hunting, 
and  when  I  returned,  and  before  I  had  spoken  a 
word  to  him,  he  came  creeping  up  to  me  in  the  most 
abject  way,  threw  himself  over,  and  put  up  his  plead- 
ing paws,  as  if  begging  forgiveness.  Was  he  ?  We 
should  call  it  that  in  a  person.  Yet  I  remember  that 
I  upbraided  him  when  he  first  showed  the  inclina- 
tion to  desert  me,  and  that  fact  may  account  for  his 
subsequent  behavior. 

When  you  speak  to  your  dog  in  a  certain  way, 
why  does  he  come  up  to  you  and  put  out  his  front 
legs  and  stretch,  and  then  stretch  his  hind  legs, 
and  maybe  open  his  mouth  and  gape?  Is  it  an 
affectation,  or  a  little  embarrassment  because  he 
does  not  know  what  you  are  saying  ?  All  dogs  do  it. 
The  human  traits  of  the  dog  are  very  obvious.  One 
time  I  drove  many  miles  through  the  country  with 
my  small  mongrel  black  and  tan  dog  Lark  with  me, 
often  on  the  seat  by  my  side.  W7hen  he  was  in  the 
wagon  and  other  dogs  came  out  and  barked  at  us, 
Lark  was  very  brave  and  answered  back  defiantly 
and  threateningly;  but  when  he  was  upon  the 
ground  and  other  dogs  came  out,  Lark  was  as  meek 
145 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

and  non-resisting  as  a  Quaker.  Then  let  me  take 
him  up  out  of  harm's  way,  and  see  how  his  tone 
would  change,  and  what  a  setting-out  he  would  give 
those  dogs ! 

I  do  not  believe  that  animals  ever  commit  suicide. 
I  do  not  believe  that  they  have  any  notions  of  death, 
or  take  any  note  of  time,  or  ever  put  up  any  "  bluff 
game,"  or  ever  deliberate  together,  or  form  plans, 
or  forecast  the  seasons.  They  may  practice  decep- 
tion, as  when  a  bird  feigns  lameness  or  paralysis 
to  decoy  you  away  from  her  nest,  but  this  of  course 
is  instinctive  and  not  conscious  deception.  There 
is  on  occasion  something  that  suggests  cooperation 
among  them,  as  when  wolves  hunt  in  relays,  as 
they  are  said  to  do,  or  when  they  hunt  in  couples, 
one  engaging  the  quarry  in  front,  while  the  other 
assaults  it  from  the  rear;  or  when  quail  roost  upon 
the  ground  in  a  ring,  their  tails  to  the  centre,  their 
heads  outward ;  or  when  cattle  or  horses  form  a 
circle  when  attacked  in  the  open  by  wild  beasts, 
the  cattle  with  their  heads  outward,  and  the  horses 
with  their  heels.  Of  course  all  this  is  instinctive, 
and  not  the  result  of  deliberation.  The  horse  always 
turns  his  tail  to  the  storm  as  well,  and  cows  and 
steers,  if  I  remember  rightly,  turn  their  heads. 

A  family  of  beavers  work  together  in  building 

their  dam,  but  whether  or  not  they  combine  their 

strength  upon  any  one  object  and  thus  achieve 

unitedly  what  they  could  not  singly,  I  do  not  know. 

146 


HUMAN  TRAITS  IN  THE  ANIMALS 

Of  course  among  the  bees  there  is  cooperation 
and  division  of  labor,  but  how  much  conscious 
intelligence  enters  into  the  matter  is  beyond  finding 
out. 

Leadership  among  the  animals,  when  it  occurs, 
as  among  savage  tribes,  usually  falls  to  the  strong, 
to  the  most  capable.  And  such  leaders  are  self- 
elected :  there  is  nothing  like  a  democracy  in  the 
animal  world.  Troops  of  wild  horses  are  said  always 
to  have  a  leader,  and  it  is  probable  that  bands  of 
elk  and  reindeer  do  also.  Flocks  of  migrating  geese 
and  swans  are  supposed  to  be  led  by  the  strongest 
old  males;  but  among  our  flocking  small  birds  I 
have  never  been  able  to  discover  anything  like  lead- 
ership. The  whole  flock  acts  as  a  unit,  and  performs 
its  astonishing  evolutions  without  leaders  or  signals. 

In  my  youth,  upon  the  farm,  I  observed  that  in 
a  dairy  of  cows  there  was  always  one  master  cow, 
one  to  whose  authoritative  sniff,  or  gesture,  or 
thrust,  all  others  yielded,  and  she  was  usually  the 
most  quiet  and  peaceful  cow  in  the  herd. 

The  male  animal,  as  compared  with  the  female, 
is  usually  the  more  aggressive  and  domineering, 
except  among  birds  of  prey,  where  the  reverse  is 
true.  Roosevelt  says  that  a  band  of  antelope,  as  of 
elk  and  deer,  is  ordinarily  led  by  an  old  doe,  but 
that  when  danger  threatens,  a  buck  may  spring  to 
the  leadership. 

In  the  breeding  season  the  pronghorn  buck  has 
147 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

his  harems  —  all  the  does  he  can  steal  or  cajole  or 
capture  from  his  rivals.  "I  have  seen  a  compar- 
atively young  buck,"  says  Roosevelt,  "who  had 
appropriated  a  doe,  hustle  her  hastily  out  of  the 
country  as  soon  as  he  saw  another  antelope  in  the 
neighborhood ;  while  on  the  other  hand,  a  big  buck, 
already  with  a  good  herd  of  does,  will  do  his  best 
to  appropriate  any  other  that  comes  in  sight." 

On  the  seal  islands  of  Alaska  we  saw  many  old 
bull  seals  with  their  harems  about  them  —  a  dozen 
or  more  demure-looking  females  resting  upon  low 
bowlders,  while  their  lord  and  master  sat  perched 
above  them  on  a  higher  rock.  The  defeated  males, 
too  young  or  too  old  to  hold  their  own  against  their 
rivals,  hung  in  ill-humored  dejection  about  the 
neighborhood.  I  have  read  that  on  the  Pampas  in 
South  America,  wild  stallions  will  capture  and 
hurry  away  domestic  mares,  if  they  have  a  chance. 

Animals  are  undoubtedly  capable  of  feeling  what 
we  call  worry  and  anxiety  just  as  distinctly  as  they 
feel  alarm  or  joy,  only,  of  course,  these  emotions 
are  much  more  complex  in  man.  How  the  mother 
bird  seems  to  worry  as  you  near  her  nest  or  her 
young ;  how  uneasy  the  cow  is  when  separated  from 
her  calf,  or  the  dog  when  he  has  lost  his  master! 
Do  these  dumb  kindred  of  ours  experience  doubts 
and  longings  and  suspicions  and  disappointments 
and  hopes  deferred  just  as  we  do  ?  —  the  same  in 
kind,  if  not  in  degree? 

148 


HUMAN  TRAITS   IN   THE   ANIMALS 

The  sheer  agony  or  terror  which  an  animal  is 
capable  of  feeling  always  excites  our  pity.  Roosevelt 
tells  of  once  coming  upon  a  deer  in  snow  so  deep 
that  its  efforts  to  flee  were  fruitless.  As  he  came 
alongside  of  it,  of  course  to  pass  it  by  untouched, 
it  fell  over  on  its  side  and  bleated  in  terror.  When 
John  Muir  and  his  dog  Stickeen,  at  the  imminent 
peril  of  theif  lives,  at  last  got  over  that  terrible 
crevasse  in  the  Alaska  glacier,  the  dog's  demon- 
strations of  joy  were  very  touching.  He  raced  and 
bounded  and  cut  capers  and  barked  and  felicitated 
himself  and  his  master  as  only  a  dog  can. 

The  play  of  animals  seems  strictly  analogous  to 
the  play  of  man,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  reason 
of  the  one,  whatever  that  be,  is  the  reason  of  the 
other.  Whether  play  is  to  be  accounted  for  upon 
the  theory  of  surplus  energy,  as  Spencer  maintains, 
or  upon  the  theory  of  instinctive  training  and  de- 
velopment —  a  sort  of  natural,  spontaneous  school 
or  kindergarten  that  has  reference  to  the  future 
wants  of  the  animal,  as  the  German  psychologist 
Karl  Groos  argues  —  a  biological  conception  of 
play  —  its  genesis  is  no  doubt  the  same  both  in  man 
and  beast.  The  main  difference  is  that  the  play  of 
one  is  aimless  and  haphazard,  while  that  of  the 
other  has  method  and  purpose.  Animals  have  no 
rules  or  systems,  and  yet  I  have  often  seen  two  red 
squirrels  engaged  in  what  seemed  precisely  analo- 
gous to  the  boys'  game  of  tag.  Up  and  down  and 
149 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

from  tree  to  tree  they  would  go,  until  one  of  them 
overtook  the  other,  when  it  seemed  to  become  its 
turn  to  flee  and  be  pursued.  But  just  how  much 
method  there  is  in  such  a  game,  it  is  impossible  to 
determine.  In  all  cases,  the  play  of  animals  tends  to 
develop  those  powers  of  speed,  or  agility,  or  strength 
that  their  ways  of  living  call  for.  The  spirit  of  play 
gradually  leaves  an  animal  at  maturity,  as  it  leaves 
man. 

A  trait  alike  common  to  man  and  beast  is  imi- 
tativeness ;  both  are  naturally  inclined  to  do  what 
they  see  their  fellows  do.  The  younger  children 
imitate  the  elder,  the  elder  imitate  their  parents, 
their  parents  imitate  their  neighbors.  The  young 
writer  imitates  the  old,  the  young  artist  copies 
the  master.  We  catch  the  trick  of  speech  or  the 
accent  of  those  we  much  associate  with;  we  prob- 
ably, in  a  measure,  even  catch  their  looks.  Any 
fashion  of  dress  or  equipage  is  as  catching  as  the 
measles.  We  are  more  or  less  copyists  all  our  lives. 
Among  the  animals,  the  young  do  what  they  see 
their  parents  do ;  this,  I  am  convinced ,  is  all  there 
is  of  parental  instruction  among  them;  the  young 
unconsciously  follow  the  example  of  their  elders. 
The  bird  learns  the  song  of  its  parent.  If  it  never 
hears  this  song,  it  may  develop  a  song  of  its  own  — 
like  its  parent's  song  in  quality,  of  course,  but  un- 
like it  in  form.  Or  it  may  acquire  the  song  of  some 
other  species. 

150 


HUMAN  TRAITS   IN  THE  ANIMALS 

Darwin  thinks  that  birds  have  "  nearly  the  same 
taste  for  the  beautiful  as  we  have,"  except,  of 
course,  that  in  man  "the  sense  of  beauty  is  mani- 
festly a  more  complex  feeling  and  is  associated  with 
various  intellectual  ideas."  It  seems  to  me  that 
if  we.  mean  by  taste  the  appreciation  of  the  beau- 
tiful, it  is  as  distinctly  a  human  gift  as  reason 
is,  or  as  is  the  sense  of  humor,  or  the  perception 
of  the  spiritual  and  the  ideal.  Shall  we  say  the 
lilies  of  the  field  have  taste  because  Solomon  in  all 
his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these  ?  or  that 
the  trees  have  taste  because  of  their  grace  and 
beauty  of  form?  or  the  insects  because  of  their 
many  beautiful  colors  and  patterns?  I  doubt  if 
the  aesthetic  feeling  is  even  rudimentary  in  birds, 
any  more  than  are  our  moral  and  other  intellectual 
traits.  It  is  thought  that  the  male  bird  sings  to 
charm  the  female.  Are  such  discordant  notes,  then, 
as  the  gobble  of  the  turkey,  the  crowing  of  the  cock, 
the  scream  of  the  peacock  or  of  the  guinea  hen,  to 
charm  the  female?  When  the  rooster  crows,  the 
nearby  hens  shake  their  heads  as  if  the  sound 
pained  them,  as  doubtless  it  does. 

Why,  then,  do  birds  sing  ?  Is  it  from  a  love  of 
beautiful  sounds  ?  I  can  only  answer  that  it  seems 
to  be  a  trait  inherent  in  the  male  sexual  principle, 
as  much  so  as  are  gay  plumes  and  ornamental 
appendages;  it  is  one  of  the  secondary  sexual  char- 
acteristics. It  is  very  significant  that  the  sweetest 
151 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

songsters  to  our  ears  are,  as  a  rule,  of  the  plainest 
colors  and  free  from  extra  plumes  and  ornaments. 
I  have  yet  to  discover  any  evidence  of  pleasure  on 
the  part  of  the  female  in  the  songs  of  her  male 
suitors.  The  male  does  not  even  sing  for  his  own 
ear;  if  he  did,  when  his  vocal  powers  are  defective, 
as  is  sometimes  the  case,  he  would  quit  singing. 
But  such  is  not  the  case;  he  sings  because  he  has 
the  impulse  to  sing,  and  that  is  reason  enough. 

I  know  but  one  fact  in  the  life  of  our  birds  that 
suggests  anything  like  taste.  I  refer  to  the  nesting- 
habits  of  the  hummingbird,  and  of  the  little  blue- 
gray  gnatcatcher  and  the  wood  pewee.  The  nests  of 
these  birds  are  always  neatly  thatched  with  lichens, 
thus  perfectly  realizing  the  dream  of  the  true  domes- 
tic architect,  of  making  the  structure  blend  with  its 
surroundings.  The  nests  of  nearly  all  birds  blend 
well  with  their  surroundings,  because  the  material 
at  hand  is  itself  of  a  dull,  neutral  character.  But 
the  lichens  which  the  hummer  and  the  gnatcatcher 
and  our  wood  pewee  use  seem,  at  first  sight,  an 
extra  touch.  Yet  I  cannot  credit  it  to  taste  or  to 
the  love  of  the  beautiful,  because  it  is  beautiful  only 
to  the  cultivated,  artistic  taste  of  man.  To  a  sav- 
age, or  even  to  those  much  higher  in  civilization, 
it  would  not  appear  beautiful.  A  certain  degree  of 
culture  has  to  be  reached  before  we  find  beauty  in 
these  quieter  things.  The  reason  why  these  birds 
thatch  the  outside  of  their  nests  with  lichens  is 
152 


HUMAN  TRAITS   IN  THE  ANIMALS 

doubtless  this :  the  nests  are  built  of  a  kind  of  down 
that  would  render  them  very  frail  and  pervious  to 
the  rain  were  they  not  stayed  and  thatched  with 
some  firmer  material.  The  lichens  and  spiders' 
webs  bind  them  together  and  keep  them  in  shape. 
Hence  I  should  say  that  utility  alone  governed  the 
bird  in  this  use  of  lichens.  Bright  objects  attract 
children,  attract  birds,  attract  quadrupeds,  but  this 
attraction  is  far  enough  from  what  we  mean  by 
taste  or  the  love  of  the  beautiful. 


VIII 
ANIMAL   AND   PLANT   INTELLIGENCE 


WHEN  I  hear  a  person  expatiating  on  the 
reasoning  powers  of  the  lower  animals,  as 
I  very  often  do,  I  want  to  tell  them  of  the  wonderful 
reasoning  powers  of  the  flies  that  pester  our  cow  in 
summer.  Those  flies  have  measured  the  length  of 
the  old  cow's  tail  so  accurately  that  they  know  the 
precise  spot  on  her  body  where  the  tail  cannot  reach 
them;  on  these  spots  they  settle  and  torment  her. 
Their  behavior  reveals  great  powers  of  calculation 
and  reasoning.  By  what  means  they  measured  the 
swing  of  that  tail  so  accurately  I  do  not  know.  When 
I  come  slying  up  with  a  switch  in  my  hand,  they 
dart  away  before  I  can  get  in  a  stroke,  because 
they  know  I  can  reach  them ;  they  take  the  mea- 
sure of  my  arm  and  switch  on  the  instant  —  on 
the  fly,  as  it  were.  And  what  shall  we  say  of  the 
mosquito  that  so  quickly  finds  out  the  vulnerable 
parts  of  one's  clothing  ?  If  one  chances  to  be  wear- 
ing low  shoes,  does  she  not  know  at  a  glance  where 
to  strike,  though  she  may  never  have  seen  low  shoes 
before  ? 

155 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

Now  is  not  that  reasoning  just  as  good  as  much 
of  the  reasoning  that  the  public  indulges  in  upon 
these  subjects?  Or,  take  the  wit  of  the  old  cow 
herself.  Yonder  is  a  very  steep  hillside,  the  high, 
abrupt  bank  of  an  old  river  terrace.  Along  this 
bank  the  cattle  have  made  a  series  of  parallel  paths, 
level  as  the  top  of  the  terrace  itself.  The  paths,  I 
should  think,  are  about  four  feet  apart,  just  far 
enough  so  that  the  cow  walking  along  one  of  them 
can  graze  at  her  ease  over  all  the  strip  of  ground 
that  lies  between  it  and  the  next  path.  When  she 
comes  to  the  end,  she  steps  up  into  the  path  above 
and  repeats  the  process,  and  so  on  till  the  whole 
side  of  the  terrace  has  been  grazed  over.  Does  not 
this  show  that  the  cow  is  very  level-headed,  that 
she  can  meet  a  difficult  problem  and  solve  it  as 
rationally  as  you  or  I?  Without  the  paths,  how 
awkward  and  difficult  the  grazing  would  be !  Now 
it  is  done  easily  because  it  is  done  from  level 
paths ;  it  is  done  thoroughly  because  it  is  done  sys- 
tematically. If  you  or  I  were  going  to  search  that 
hillside  over  daily,  should  not  we  adopt  similar  or 
identical  tactics? 

In  Idaho  I  saw  that  the  grazing  sheep  had  ter- 
raced the  grassy  mountain-sides  in  the  same  way. 
Their  level  paths  were  visible  from  afar.  How 
inevitable  and  free  from  calculation  it  all  is !  The 
grazing  cattle  take  the  easiest  way,  and  this  way  is 
horizontally  along  the  face  of  the  hill.  To  take  the 
156 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

hill  by  a  straight  climb  or  diagonally  would  be 
labor,  so  the  animal  moves  easily  along  its  side, 
cropping  the  grass  within  reach.  Then  she  takes  a 
step  or  two  upward  and  grazes  back  the  other  way, 
and  this  process  is  repeated  till  a  series  of  level 
parallel  paths  are  worn  in  the  side  of  the  hill.  They 
are  as  much  a  natural  result  as  is  the  river  terrace 
itself. 

The  cow  has  always  been  a  famous  engineer 
in  laying  out  paths;  sheep  are,  too.  They  take 
the  line  of  least  resistance ;  they  ford  the  streams 
at  the  best  places;  they  cross  the  mountains  in 
the  deep  notches ;  they  scale  the  hills  by  the  easi- 
est grade.  Shall  we,  therefore,  credit  them  with 
reason  ? 

When  I  was  a  bucolic  treasury  clerk  in  Washing- 
ton, the  cow  of  an  old  Irishwoman  near  by  used  to 
peep  through  the  cracks  in  my  garden  fence  at  my 
growing  corn  and  cabbage  till  her  mouth  watered. 
Then  she  saw  that  a  place  in  the  fence  yielded  to 
me  and  let  me  in,  so  she  tried  it;  she  nudged  the 
gate  with  her  nose  until  she  hit  the  latch,  and 
the  gate  swung  open  by  its  own  weight  and  let  her 
in.  There  was  an  audible  crunching  of  succulent 
leaves  and  stalks  that  soon  attracted  my  attention. 
I  hustled  her  out,  and  sent  a  kick  after  her  that  fell 
short  and  nearly  un jointed  my  leg.  But  she  was  soon 
back,  and  she  came  again  and  again  till  I  discovered 
her  secret  and  repaired  the  latch  so  that  nudging  or 
157 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

butting  the  gate  would  not  open  it.  How  surely  such 
conduct  as  this  of  the  cow's  evinces  reason  to  most 
persons !  But  shall  we  not  rather  call  it  the  blind 
gropings  of  instinct  stimulated  into  action  by  the 
sight  and  odor  of  the  tender  vegetables  ?  Many  of 
the'  lowest  organisms  show  just  as  much  intelligence 
about  their  food  as  did  the  old  cow.  Even  the 
American  sundew,  according  to  Mrs.  Treat,  will 
move  its  leaves  so  that  it  can  seize  a  fly  pinned  half 
an  inch  from  it.  The  method  of  the  old  cow  was 
that  of  hit  and  miss,  or  trial  and  error.  She  wanted 
the  corn,  and  she  butted  the  gate,  and  as  luck  would 
have  it,  when  she  hit  the  latch  the  gate  swung  open. 
But  shall  we  conclude  that  the  beast  had  any  idea 
of  the  principle  of  the  gate  ?  Or  any  idea  at  all  but 
the  sense  impression  made  upon  her  hunger  by  the 
growing  vegetables  ?  Animals  do  not  connect  cause 
and  effect  as  we  do  by  thinking  the  "therefore;" 
they  simply  associate  one  thing  with  another.  Your 
dog  learns  to  associate  your  act  of  taking  your  hat 
and  cane  with  a  walk,  or  your  gun  with  the  delights 
of  the  chase,  or  with  its  report,  if  he  is  afraid  of  it, 
and  so  on.  Without  this  power  of  association  the 
birds  and  beasts  could  not  get  on  in  life;  the  con- 
tinuity of  their  experience  would  be  broken.  It  is 
a  rude  kind  of  memory  —  sense  memory.  A  sense 
impression  to-day  revives  a  sense  impression  of  yes- 
terday, or  of  the  day  before,  and  that  is  about  all 
there  is  of  it. 

158 


ANIMAL  AND   PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

While  I  am  telling  tales  on  old  Brindle,  let  me 
mention  another  point.  Most  farmers  and  country 
people  think  that  the  "giving  down"  or  "holding 
up"  of  the  milk  by  the  cow  is  a  voluntary  act.  In 
fact,  they  fancy  that  the  udder  is  a  vessel  filled  with 
milk,  and  that  the  cow  releases  it  or  withholds  it  just 
as  she  chooses.  But  the  udder  is  a  manufactory;  it 
is  filled  with  blood,  from  which  the  milk  is  manu- 
factured while>you  milk.  This  process  is  controlled 
by  the  cow's  nervous  system.  When  she  is  excited 
or  in  any  way  disturbed,  as  by  a  stranger,  or  by 
the  taking  away  of  her  calf,  or  any  other  cause,  the 
process  is  arrested  and  the  milk  will  not  flow.  The 
nervous  energy  goes  elsewhere.  The  whole  process 
is  as  involuntary  as  is  digestion  in  man,  and  is  dis- 
turbed or  arrested  in  about  the  same  way. 

Why  should  we  not  credit  the  child  with  reason 
when  it  is  learning  to  walk,  and  with  a  knowledge 
of  the  law  of  gravity  ?  See  how  carefully  it  poises 
itself  on  the  feet  and  adjusts  itself  to  the  pull  of  the 
invisible  force.  It  is  a  natural  philosopher  from 
the  cradle,  and*  knows  all  about  the  necessity  of 
keeping  the  centre  of  gravity  within  the  base  if  it 
would  avoid  a  fall !  But  there  is  probably  less  cal- 
culation in  all  this  than  there  appears  to  be,  since 
Huxley  tells  us  that  a  frog  with  most  of  its  brain 
removed  will  keep  its  position  on  the  top  of  the 
hand  while  you  slowly  turn  it  over.  It,  too,  feels 
the  pull  of  gravity  and  knows  all  about  the  impor- 
159 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

tance  of  keeping  the  centre  within  the  base.  Throw 
this  brainless  frog  into  the  water,  and  it  swims  as 
well  as  ever  it  did.  Dan  Beard,  in  his  delightful 
"Animal  Book,"  says  that  a  rattlesnake  which  had 
just  had  its  head  cut  off,  coiled  and  struck  him  with 
the  bloody  stump  when  he  touched  it  as  promptly 
as  it  would  have  done  with  its  head  on.  So  it  is 
doubtless  true  that  all  creatures  do  many  reasonable 
and  natural  things  without  possessing  the  faculty 
of  reason.  Much  of  our  own  conduct  in  life  is  the 
result  of  this  same  unconscious,  unreasoning  obedi- 
ence to  natural  forces  or  innate  tendencies. 

The  English  psychologist  Hobhouse  gives  an 
account,  in  his  work  on  "Mind  and  Evolution," 
of  the  experiments  he  tried  with  cats,  dogs,  mon- 
keys, an  otter,  and  an  elephant,  to  test  their  intelli- 
gence. Their  food  was  placed  in  boxes  or  jars,  or 
tied  to  a  string,  in  such  ways  that  to  get  at  it  the 
animal  had  to  do  certain  definite  concrete  things 
that  it  could  not  have  been  called  upon  to  do  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  its  natural  life,  such  as  pull- 
ing strings,  working  levers,  drawing  bolts,  lifting 
latches,  opening  drawers,  upsetting  jugs,  always 
stimulated  by  the  prospect  of  food.  After  many 
trials  at  the  various  tricks,  a  little  gleam  of  intel- 
ligence seemed  to  pass  through  their  minds.  It 
was  as  if  a  man  without  power  to  move  should 
finally  feebly  lift  a  hand  or  shake  his  head.  The  ele- 
phant was  taught  to  pull  a  bolt  and  open  the  lid 
160 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

of  a  box  only  by  her  keeper  taking  her  trunk  in  his 
hand  and  guiding  it  through  each  movement,  stage 
by  stage.  She  learned  to  pull  the  bolt  on  the  seventh 
trial,  but  could  not  learn  the  three  movements  of 
drawing  bolt,  opening  lid,  and  holding  it  open,  till 
the  fortieth  trial,  on  the  third  day.  Sometimes  she 
tried  to  lift  the  lid  before  she  drew  the  bolt,  some- 
times she  pushed  the  bolt  the  wrong  way.  Another 
elephant  learned  to  draw  the  bolt  on  the  fourth 
trial.  The  otter  learned  to  draw  the  bolt  after  see- 
ing it  drawn  twelve  times.  Jack,  the  dog,  learned 
to  do  the  trick  in  his  pawing,  blundering  way  after 
many  trials.  A  bolt  furnished  with  a  knob  so  that 
it  could  not  be  drawn  all  the  way  out  worried  all 
the  animals  a  good  deal.  The  dog  had  ninety  les- 
sons, and  yet  did  not  clearly  understand  the  trick. 
The  monkeys  and  the  chimpanzee  learned  the  dif- 
ferent tricks  more  readily  than  the  other  animals, 
but  there  "appeared  to  be  no  essential  difference 
in  capacity  to  learn  between  the  dogs,  the  elephants, 
the  cats,  and  others."  None  of  the  animals  seemed 
to  appreciate  the  point  of  the  trick,  the  dependence 
of  one  thing  upon  another,  or  the  why  of  any  par- 
ticular movement.  Poor  things !  their  strenuous 
intellectual  efforts  in  drawing  a  bolt  or  working 
a  lever  used  to  tire  them  very  much.  Sometimes, 
under  the  tutelage  of  their  trainers,  they  would 
seem  to  show  a  gleam  of  real  intelligence,  as  when 
you  fan  a  dull  ember  till  it  glows  a  little.  The 
161 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

next  hour  or  the  next  day  the  ember  had  lost 
its  glow  and  had  to  be  fanned  again.  Yet  they 
all  did  improve  in  doing  their  little  "  stunts,"  but 
how  much  was  awakened  intelligence,  and  how 
much  mere  force  of  habit,  one  could  not  be  quite 
sure. 

Hobhouse  is  no  doubt  right  when  he  says  that 
intelligence  arises  within  the  sphere  of  instinct,  and 
that  the  former  often  modifies  the  action  of  the 
latter.  The  extent  to  which  the  lower  animals  profit 
by  experience  is  a  measure  of  their  intelligence. 
If  they  hit  upon  new  and  improved  ways  sponta- 
neously, or  adapt  new  means  to  an  end,  they  show 
a  measure  of  intelligence.  I  once  stopped  up  the 
entrance  to  a  black  hornets'  nest  with  cotton.  The 
hornets  removed  the  cotton  by  chewing  off  the 
fibres  that  held  it  to  the  nest,  and  then  proceeded 
to  change  the  entrance  by  carrying  it  farther  around 
toward  the  wall  of  the  house,  so  that  the  feat  of 
stopping  it  up  was  not  so  easy.  Was  this  an  act 
of  intelligence,  or  only  an  evidence  of  the  plasti- 
city or  resourcefulness  of  instinct  ?  But  if  a  dog 
in  stalking  a  woodchuck  (and  I  have  been  told  of 
such  things)  at  the  critical  moment  were  to  rush 
to  the  woodchuck's  hole  so  as  to  get  there  before  it, 
this  were  an  act  of  intelligence.  To  hunt  and  stalk 
is  instinctive  in  the  dog,  but  to  correlate  its  act  to 
that  of  its  prey  in  this  manner  would  show  the  tri- 
umph of  intelligence  over  instinct. 
162 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

ii 

Huxley  thought  that  because  of  the  absence  of 
language  the  brutes  can  have  no  trains  of  thought 
but  only  trains  of  feeling,  and  this  is  the  opinion  of 
most  comparative  psychologists.  I  am  myself  quite 
ready  to  admit  that  the  lower  animals  come  as  near 
to  reasoning  as  they  come  to  having  a  language. 
Their  various  cries  and  calls  —  the  call  to  the  mate, 
to  the  young,  the  cry  of  anger,  of  fear,  of  alarm, 
of  pain,  of  joy  —  do  serve  as  the  medium  of  some 
sort  of  communication,  but  they  do  not  stand  for 
ideas  or  mental  concepts  any  more  than  the  various 
cries  of  a  child  do.  They  are  the  result  of  simple 
reactions  to  outward  objects  or  to  inward  wants, 
and  do  not  imply  any  mental  process  whatever.  A 
grown  person  may  utter  a  cry  of  pain  or  fear  or 
pleasure  with  a  mind  utterly  blank  of  any  ideas. 
Once  on  a  moonlight  night  I  lay  in  wait  for  some 
boy  poachers  in  my  vineyard.  As  I  suddenly  rose 
up,  clad  in  a  long  black  cloak,  and  rushed  for  one 
and  seized  his  leg  as  he  was  hastening  over  the 
fence,  he  uttered  a  wild,  agonized  scream  precisely 
as  a  wild  animal  does  when  suddenly  seized.  He 
told  me  afterward  that  he  was  fairly  frightened 
out  of  his  wits.  For  the  moment  he  was  simply 
an  unreasoning  animal. 

A  language  has  to  be  learned,  but  the  animals 
all  use  their  various  calls  and  cries  instinctively. 
163 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

What  a  clear  case  is  that  of  the  hen  when  she  brings 
off  her  first  brood!  She  speaks  a  language  which 
she  never  spoke  before,  and  her  chickens  hear  a 
language  which  they  never  heard  before,  and  under- 
stand it  instantly.  When  the  mother  hen  calls  them, 
they  come;  when  she  utters  her  alarm-note,  they 
hide,  or  run  to  her  for  protection. 

The  various  calls  and  cries  of  the  animals  have 
just  about  the  same  significance  as  do  their  gestures 
of  bristling,  arching,  pawing,  and  so  on.  They  are 
understood  by  their  fellows,  and  they  are  express- 
ive of  emotions  and  not  of  ideas.  The  loud  cack- 
ling of  a  rooster  which  I  hear  as  I  write  expresses 
in  a  vague  way  some  excitement,  pleasurable  or 
otherwise.  Or  he  may  be  signaling  to  the  cackling 
hen  to  guide  her  to  the  flock,  an  instinct  inherited 
from  his  jungle-fowl  ancestors. 

The  parrot,  of  course,  does  not  know  the  mean- 
ing of  the  words  it  repeats  so  glibly;  it  only  asso- 
ciates certain  sounds  with  certain  acts  or  occasions, 
and  says  "  Good-by,"  or  "  Come  in,"  at  the  right 
time  because  it  has  been  taught  to  connect  these 
sounds  with  certain  sense  impressions  through  the 
eye  and  ear.  When  a  child  is  in  pain,  it  cries; 
when  it  is  pleased,  it  laughs :  always  are  its  vari- 
ous sounds  expressive  of  some  immediate  concrete 
want  or  experience.  This  is  the  character  of  all 
animal  language;  it  does  not  express  ideas,  but 
feelings  —  emotions  then  and  there  experienced  — 
164 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

the  result  of  an  inward  impulse  or  an  outward 
condition. 

With  ourselves,  emotion  arises  spontaneously 
and  is  not  the  result  of  will.  We  cannot  be  angry, 
or  joyous,  or  depressed,  or  experience  the  emotion 
of  the  beautiful,  or  of  the  sublime,  or  of  love,  or 
terror,  by  mere  willing.  These  emotions  arise  under 
certain  conditions  that  are  not  matters  of  will  or 
calculation.  If  a  man  does  not  flee  from  danger, 
real  or  imaginary,  like  an  animal,  it  is  because  his 
reason  or  his  pride  has  stepped  in  and  stopped  him. 
Man's  reason  shows  itself  in  checking  or  controlling 
his  emotion,  while  the  lower  animals  have  no  such 
check  or  stay.  A  man  may  think  about  the  danger 
from  which  he  flees,  or  about  the  scene  that  thrilled 
him,  or  of  the  woman  that  moved  him,  but  the 
thinking  always  follows  the  emotion,  while  the 
horse  or  the  dog  flees  without  stopping  to  think. 

Without  doubt,  to  me  at  least,  man  has  climbed 
up  from  some  lower  animal  form,  but  he  has,  as  it 
were,  pulled  the  ladder  up  after  him.  None  of  man's 
humbler  kindred,  even  if  man  were  to  reach  them 
a  hand,  or  a  dozen  hands,  could  now  mount  to  the 
human  plane. 

As  there  must  be  a  point  back  along  the  line 
of  our  descent  where  consciousness  began  —  con- 
sciousness in  the  animal  and  self-consciousness  in 
man  —  so  there  must  be  a  point  where  reason 
began.  If  we  had  all  the  missing  links  in  the  chain, 
165 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

no  doubt  we  might,  approximately  at  least,  deter- 
mine the  form  in  which  it  first  dawned.  The 
higher  anthropoid  apes,  which  are,  probably,  a 
lateral  branch  of  the  stem  of  the  great  biological 
tree  that  bore  man,  show  occasional  gleams  of  it, 
but  reason,  as  we  ascribe  it  to  the  lower  orders,  is 
more  a  kind  of  symptomatic  reason,  a  vague  fore- 
shadowing of  reason  rather  than  the  substance  it- 
self. For  a  long  time  the  child  is  without  reason, 
or  any  mental  concepts,  and  all  its  activities  are 
reactions  to  stimuli,  like  those  of  an  animal;  it  is 
merely  a  bundle  of  instincts,  but  by  and  by  it  begins 
to  show  something  higher  and  we  hail  the  dawn 
of  reason,  and  the  child's  development  from  the 
animal  plane  into  the  human. 

The  development  of  reason  in  the  race  of  man 
has  of  course  been  as  gradual  as  the  development  of 
his  body  from  some  lower  animal  form,  but  is  it  any 
more  startling  or  miraculous  than  those  slow  trans- 
mutations or  transformations  which  we  trace  every- 
where in  nature,  and  which  in  the  end  amount  to 
complete  metamorphosis  ?  It  is  a  new  thing  in  the 
animal  world,  and  separates  man  from  the  lower 
orders  by  an  impassable  gulf.  The  gulf  has  been 
crossed  in  the  past;  not  by  a  sudden  leap,  but 
by  slow  growth  and  transmutation,  just  as  the  gulf 
between  the  bird  and  reptile,  or  between  the  rep- 
tile and  the  amphibian,  has  been  crossed.  Man  is 
separated  from  the  lower  orders  less  by  a  phys- 
166 


ANIMAL  AND   PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

ical  than  by  a  psychological  gulf.  His  anatomy 
is  fundamentally  the  same,  though  there  is  doubt- 
less an  invisible  gulf  in  the  molecules  of  the  brain 
cells ;  but  his  psychology  is  fundamentally  different. 
Is  this  difference  any  greater,  it  may  be  asked, 
than  that  which  separates  the  highest  human  in- 
telligence from  that  of  the  lowest  savage?  I  look 
upon  it  more  as  a  difference  of  kind  than  of  degree. 
It  is  comparatively  easy  to  trace  a  continuous  line 
of  development  from  the  mind  of  the  Hottentot  to 
the  mind  of  the  foremost  European,  but  between 
the  savage  and  our  pithecoid  ancestors  there  are 
many  missing  links.  The  evolutionary  process  that 
must  have  connected  them  has  worked  out  some- 
thing like  a  metamorphosis. 

Darwin  in  seeking  to  prove  the  animal  origin  of 
man  felt  called  upon  to  show  at  least  the  rudiments 
of  man's  reasoning  powers  in  his  humbler  begin- 
nings. Certain  it  is  that  evolution  must  have  some- 
thing to  go  upon.  But  does  it  not  have  enough  to 
go  upon  in  the  kind  of  intelligence  the  unthinking 
animal  world  exhibits?  The  slow  metamorphosis 
of  this  into  human  reason  is  no  more  difficult  to 
conceive  of  than  a  hundred  other  slow  metamor- 
phoses that  may  be  traced  in  nature,  wherein  we 
see  the  adult  animal  totally  unlike  its  youthful 
beginning,  or  where  we  see  two  chemical  elements 
uniting  to  form  a  third  entirely  unlike  either.  Ani- 
mal and  vegetable  life  doubtless  had  a  common 
167 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

origin,  but  behold  how  they  have  diverged.  How 
could  the  intelligence  of  one  have  been  evolved  out 
of  the  intelligence  of  the  other  without  this  mystery 
of  slow  metamorphosis  ? 

I  do  not  know  how  far  back  along  the  line  of  evo- 
lution in  animal  life  biologists  place  the  beginning 
of  the  sense  of  sight,  certainly  the  highest  of  all 
bodily  senses.  But  it  must  have  begun  somewhere 
a  good  way  this  side  of  the  first  unicellular  life ;  the 
eye  as  an  organ  and  as  we  know  it  is  doubtless  a 
late  development.  And  what  a  marvel  it  is !  What 
can  be  a  greater  departure  from  the  sense  of  touch 
and  taste  and  smell  —  more  like  a  miraculous  ad- 
dition or  metamorphosis  —  than  the  sense  of  sight  ? 
And  yet  its  foundation  is  the  same  as  that  of  the 
other  senses,  nerve  sensibility. 

Or  take  another  near-at-hand  illustration.  What 
can  seem  more  like  a  new  birth,  a  new  creation, 
than  the  flower  of  a  plant  when  contrasted  with  its 
leaves  and  stalk  and  root?  Yet  all  this  delicacy 
and  color  and  fragrance  come  by  way  of  these  hum- 
bler parts;  indeed,  lay  dormant  there  in  the  soil 
till  this  something  we  call  life  drew  them  out  of  it 
and  built  them  up  into  this  exquisite  form.  In  the 
same  way,  may  not  the  animal  nature  in  the  course 
of  long  ages  have  blossomed  into  the  mental  and 
spiritual  powers  which  man  possesses,  and  which 
are  only  latent  in  the  lower  creatures  ?  We  see  the 
miracle  of  the  flower  daily,  but  the  other  miracle  is 
168 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

a  slow  process  that  no  man  has  witnessed  or  can 
witness.   Strike  out  the  element  of  time,  and  we  see 
it  as  we  see  the  stalk  bring  forth  the  flower,  or  as 
we  see  the  grub  metamorphosed  into  the  butterfly. 
We  turn  smoke  into  flame  by  supplying  the  fire 
with  a  little  more  oxygen.   Has  any  new  thing  been 
added  ?   What  is  added  to  transmute  animal  intel- 
ligence into  human  seems  to  be  only  more  oxygen 
-  more  of  that  which  favors  mental  combustion 
—  more  brain  matter  and  a  finer  nervous  organiza- 
tion. 

in 

We  translate  the  action  of  bird  and  beast  into 
human  thought  just  as  we  translate  their  cries  and 
calls  into  human  speech.  But  the  bird  does  not 
utter  the  words  we  ascribe  to  it,  it  only  makes  a 
sound  that  suggests  the  words.  So  its  behavior  is 
not  the  result  of  thought,  but  it  is  such  as  to  suggest 
thought  to  a  thinking  animal,  and  we  proceed  to 
explain  it  in  terms  of  thought. 

We  see  a  crow  approaching  a  bit  of  meat  upon 
the  lawn  in  winter  and  note  his  suspicion.  He 
circles  about  and  surveys  it  from  all  points  and 
approaches  it  with  extreme  caution,  and  we  say  he 
suspects  some  trap  or  concealed  enemy,  or  plot  to 
do  him  injury,  when  in  fact  he  does  not  consciously 
suspect  anything  or  think  anything;  he  is  simply 
obeying  his  inborn  instinct  to  be  on  the  lookout  for 
danger  at  all  times  and  in  all  places  —  the  instinct 
169 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

of  self-preservation.  When  the  chickadee  comes  to 
the  bone  or  bit  of  suet  upon  the  tree  under  your 
window,  it  does  so  with  little  or  no  signs  of  suspi- 
cion. Its  enemies  are  of  a  different  kind,  and  its 
instincts  work  differently.  Or  when  we  see  a  fox 
trying  to  elude  or  delay  the  hound  that  is  pursuing 
him,  by  taking  to  rail  fences  or  bare  plowed  fields, 
or  to  the  ice  of  frozen  streams,  we  say  he  knows 
what  he  is  doing;  he  knows  his  scent  will  not 
lie  upon  the  rail  or  the  bare  earth  or  the  ice  as 
upon  the  snow  or  the  moist  ground.  We  translate 
his  act  into  our  mental  concepts.  The  fox  is,  of 
course,  trying  to  elude  or  to  shake  off  his  pursuer, 
but  he  is  not  drawing  upon  his  stores  of  natural 
knowledge  or  his  powers  of  thought  to  do  so;  he 
does  not  realize  as  you  or  I  would  that  it  is  the  scent 
of  his  foot  that  gives  the  clue  to  his  enemy.  How 
can  he  have  any  general  ideas  about  odors  and  sur- 
faces that  best  retain  them?  He  is  simply  obeying 
the  instinctive  cunning  of  his  vulpine  nature,  and 
takes  to  the  fence  or  to  the  ice  or  to  the  water  as 
a  new  expedient  when  others  have  failed.  Such  a 
course  on  our  part  under  like  circumstances  would 
be  the  result  of  some  sort  of  mental  process,  but 
with  the  fox  it  is  evidence  of  the  flexibility  and 
resourcefulness  of  instinct.  The  animals  all  do 
rational  things  without  reason,  cunning  things  with- 
out calculation,  and  provident  things  without  fore- 
thought. Of  course  we  have  to  fall  back  upon 
170 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

instinct  to  account  for  their  acts  —  that  natural 
"  propensity,"  as  Paley  defined  it,  which  is  "  prior 
to  experience  and  independent  of  instruction." 

In  both  the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds  we  see 
a  kind  of  intelligence  that  we  are  always  tempted 
to  describe  in  terms  of  our  own  intelligence;  it 
seems  to  run  parallel  to  and  to  foreshadow  our  own 
as  to  ways  and  means  and  getting  on  in  the  world 
-  propagation,  preservation,  dissemination,  adap- 
tation —  the  plant  resorting  to  many  ingenious 
devices  to  scatter  its  seed  and  to  secure  cross-fertili- 
zation; the  animal  eluding  its  enemies,  hiding  its 
door  or  its  nest,  finding  its  way,  securing  its  food, 
and  many  other  things  —  all  exhibiting  a  kind  of 
intelligence  that  is  independent  of  instruction  or 
experience,  and  that  suggests  human  reason  with- 
out being  one  with  it.  Each  knows  what  its  kind 
knows,  and  each  does  what  its  kind  does,  but  only  in 
man  do  we  reach  self-knowledge  and  the  freedom 
of  conscious  intelligence. 

The  animals  all  profit  more  or  less  by  experience, 
and  this  would  at  first  thought  seem  to  imply  some 
sort  of  mental  capacity.  But  vegetables  profit  by 
experience  also,  and  mainly  in  the  same  way,  by 
increasing  power  to  live  and  multiply.  Hunt  an 
animal  and  it  becomes  wary  and  hardy;  persecute 
a  plant  and  it,  too,  seems  to  tighten  its  hold  upon 
life.  How  hardy  and  prolific  are  the  weeds  against 
which  every  man's  hand  is  turned!  How  full  of 
171 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

resources  they  are;  how  they  manage  to  shift  for 
themselves,  while  the  cultivated  plants  are  tender 
and  helpless  in  comparison !  Pull  up  redroot  in  your 
garden  and  lay  it  on  the  ground,  and  the  chances 
are  that  one  or  more  rootlets  that  come  in  con- 
tact with  the  soil  will  take  hold  again  and  enable 
the  plant  to  mature  part  of  its  seeds.  This  adapta- 
bility and  tenacity  of  life  is,  no  doubt,  the  result  of 
the  warfare  waged  against  this  weed  by  long  gen- 
erations of  gardeners.  Natural  selection  steps  in 
and  preserves  the  most  hardy.  Of  course  the  indi- 
vidual animal  profits  more  by  experience  than  the 
individual  plant,  yet  the  individual  plant  profits 
also.  Do  not  repeated  transplantings  make  a  plant 
more  hardy  and  increase  its  chances  of  surviving? 
If  it  does  not  learn  something,  it  acquires  new 
powers,  it  profits  by  adversity. 

IV 

But  as  the  animal  is  nearer  to  us  than  the  vege- 
table, so  is  animal  intelligence  nearer  akin  to  our 
own  than  plant  intelligence.  We  hear  of  plant 
physiology,  but  not  yet  of  plant  psychology.  When 
a  plant  growing  in  a  darkened  room  leans  toward 
the  light,  the  leaning,  we  are  taught,  is  a  purely 
mechanical  process,  the  effect  of  the  light  upon 
the  cells  of  the  plant  brings  it  about  in  a  purely 
mechanical  way;  but  when  an  animal  is  drawn  to 
the  light,  the  process  is  a  much  more  complex  one, 
172 


ANIMAL   AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

and  implies  a  nervous  system.  It  is  thought  by 
some  that  the  roots  of  a  water-loving  plant  divine 
the  water  from  afar  and  run  toward  it.  The  truth 
is,  the  plant  or  tree  sends  its  roots  in  all  directions, 
but  those  on  the  side  of  the  water  find  the  ground 
moister  in  that  direction  and  their  growth  is  accel- 
erated, while  the  others  are  checked  by  the  dryness 
of  the  soil.  An  ash  tree  stood  on  a  rocky  slope 
where  the  soil  is  thin  and  poor,  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  feet  from  my  garden.  After  a  while  it  sent  so 
many  roots  down  into  the  garden,  and  so  robbed 
the  garden  vegetables  of  the  fertilizers,  that  we  cut 
the  roots  off  and  dug  a  trench  to  keep  the  tree  from 
sending  more.  Now  the  gardener  thought  the  tree 
divined  the  rich  pasturage  down  below  there  and 
reached  for  it  accordingly.  The  truth  is,  I  suppose, 
that  the  roots  on  that  side  found  a  little  more  and 
better  soil,  and  so  pushed  on  till  they  reached  the 
garden,  where  they  were  at  once  so  well  fed  that 
they  multiplied  and  extended  themselves  rapidly. 
Both  plant  and  tree  know  a  good  thing  when  they 
find  it.  How  could  they  continue  if  they  did  not  ? 
A  birch  tree  starting  life  upon  the  top  of  a  rock, 
—  as  birch  trees  more  than  any  others  are  wont 
to  do,  —  where  the  soil  is  thin,  soon  starts  a  root 
down  to  the  ground  several  feet  below  in  what  seems 
a  very  intelligent  way.  Now  the  tree  cannot  know 
that  the  ground  is  there  within  reach.  On  one  side 
of  the  rock,  usually  on  the  north  side,  it  finds 
173 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

moss  and  moisture,  and  here  the  root  makes  its 
way.  When  it  reaches  the  edge  of  the  rocks,  it 
bends  down  just  as  a  fluid  would  do  and  continues 
its  course  till  it  reaches  the  ground ;  then  it  rejoices, 
so  to  speak.  All  other  roots  are  called  in  or  dry 
up,  this  one  root  increases  till  it  is  like  a  continua- 
tion of  the  trunk  itself,  and  a  new  root  system  is 
established  in  the  ground.  But  why  we  find  the 
birch  more  often  established  upon  a  rock  than  any 
other  tree,  I  do  not  yet  know. 

I  know  of  a  little  birch  tree  that  is  planted  in  the 
niche  on  the  face  of  an  almost  perpendicular  rock 
in  the  edge  of  the  woods.  There  has  been  a  tree, 
probably  a  birch,  in  the  same  niche  before  it,  and 
in  this  mould  of  its  ancestor  the  tree  is  planted. 
It  has  wedged  its  roots  into  the  rock  wherever 
there  is  a  seam  or  crack,  and  it  must  have  thriven 
fairly  well  on  its  scant  rations  of  soil  for  several 
years,  or  until  it  became  a  sapling  the  size  of  one's 
wrist.  Then  it  started  a  root  diagonally  down  the 
face  of  the  rock  toward  the  ground,  about  four 
feet  distant.  How  that  root  made  its  way  there 
on  that  bare,  smooth  surface,  where  there  is  only 
a  thin  wash  of  lichens,  is  a  mystery.  But  it  did, 
and  it  reached  the  ground  and  is  now  the  size  of 
a  broom  handle,  and  is  doubtless  the  tree's  main 
source  of  sustenance. 

What  prompted  the  tree  to  send  it  down,  to 
organize  and  equip  this  relief  expedition  to  the  soil 
174 


ANIMAL  AND  PLANT  INTELLIGENCE 

across  the  desert  face  of  the  rock?  I  have  always 
supposed  a  growing  root  lived  off  the  country  it 
traveled  over,  but  in  this  case  it  must  have  been 
fed  from  the  rear ;  the  tree  pushed  it  on  even  when 
it  brought  in  no  supplies.  How  interesting  it  would 
be  to  know  how  far  this  root  would  have  traveled 
across  that  bare  rock-face  had  the  ground  been 
many  yards  away !  Have  trees  more  wit  than  is 
dreamed  of  in  our  philosophy  ? 

The  intelligence  of  the  plants  and  flowers  of 
which  Maeterlinck  writes  so  delightfully  is,  of 
course,  only  a  manifestation  of  the  general  intelli- 
gence that  pervades  all  nature.  Maeterlinck  is 
usually  sound  upon  his  facts,  however  free  and 
poetic  he  may  be  in  the  interpretation  of  them. 
The  plants  and  flowers  certainly  do  some  wonder- 
ful things;  they  secure  definite  ends  by  definite 
means  and  devices,  as  much  so  as  does  man  him- 
self —  witness  the  elaborate  and  ingenious  mechan- 
ical contrivances  by  which  the  orchids  secure  cross- 
fertilization.  Yet  if  we  are  to  use  terms  strictly,  we 
can  hardly  call  it  intelligence  in  the  human  sense, 
that  is,  the  result  of  reflection  on  the  part  of  the 
plant  itself,  any  more  than  we  can  ascribe  the 
general  structure  and  economy  of  the  plant,  or  of 
our  own  bodies,  to  an  individual  act  of  intelligence. 

There  are  ten  thousand  curious  and  wonderful 
things  in  both  the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds,  and 
in  the  organic  world  as  well,  but  it  is  only  in  a  poetic 
175 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

and  imaginative  sense  that  we  can  speak  of  them 
as  the  result  of  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  things 
themselves :  we  personify  the  things  when  we  do 
so.  The  universe  is  pervaded  with  mind,  or  with 
something  for  which  we  have  no  other  name.  But 
it  is  not  as  an  ingenious  machine,  say  the  modern 
printing-press,  is  pervaded  with  mind.  The  machine 
is  a  senseless  tool  in  the  hands  of  an  external  intel- 
ligence; in  nature  we  see  that  the  intelligence  is 
within  and  is  inseparable  from  it.  The  machine  is 
the  result  of  mind,  but  things  in  nature  seem  the 
organs  of  mind. 


IX 

THE  REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 
ANIMALS 


r  1 1HERE  is  to  me  a  perennial  interest  in  this 
_JL  question  of  animal  instinct  versus  intelligence, 
and  I  trust  my  readers  will  pardon  me  if  I  again 
take  the  question  up.  Ever  since  one  of  our  lead- 
ing weekly  journals  (last  June)  declared  its  belief 
that  "  animals  are  capable  of  reasoning  from  certain 
premises,  and  do  possess  and  express,  though  in  a 
rudimentary  form,  many  of  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual processes  and  sentiments  of  man,"  I  have 
wanted  to  take  another  shot  at  the  subject.  I  do 
not  now  recall  that  any  one  has  before  claimed  that 
the  lower  animals  possess  many  of  the  moral  senti- 
ments of  man,  though  a  goodly  number  of  persons 
seem  to  have  persuaded  themselves  that  animals 
do  reason.  Even  so  competent  a  naturalist  as  Mr. 
Hornaday  says  that  asking  if  animals  reason  is 
to  him  like  asking  if  fishes  swim.  But  I  suspect 
that  Mr.  Hornaday  is  a  better  naturalist  than  he  is 
a  comparative  psychologist,  because  all  the  eminent 
comparative  psychologists,  so  far  as  I  know  them, 
177 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

have  reached  the  conclusion  that  animals  do  not 
reason.  That  eminent  German  psychologist,  Wundt, 
says  that  the  entire  intellectual  life  of  animals  can 
be  accounted  for  on  the  simple  law  of  association; 
and  Lloyd  Morgan,  the  greatest  of  living  English 
comparative  psychologists,  in  his  discussion  of  the 
question,  "  Do  animals  reason  ? "  concludes  that 
they  do  not  —  they  do  "  not  perceive  the  why  and 
think  the  therefore."  He  urges,  very  justly,  I  think, 
that  "  in  no  case  is  an  animal's  activity  to  be  inter- 
preted as  the  outcome  of  a  higher  psychic  faculty  if 
it  can  fairly  be  interpreted  as  the  outcome  of  fac- 
ulties which  are  lower  in  the  psychological  scale." 
That  is  to  say,  Why  impute  reason  to  an  animal 
if  its  behavior  can  be  explained  on  the  theory  of 
instinct  ? 

Some  of  our  later  nature  writers  seek  to  cut  out 
instinct  entirely,  and  call  it  all  reason.  If  we  cut 
out  instinct,  then  we  have  two  kinds  of  reason  to 
account  for  and  our  last  state  is  worse  than  our 
first.  The  young  dog  that  in  the  house  takes  a  bone 
and  goes  through  the  motions  of  burying  it  on  the 
kitchen  floor,  digging  the  hole,  putting  it  in,  covering 
it  up,  and  pressing  the  imaginary  soil  down  with  his 
nose,  does  not  show  the  same  kind  of  intelligence 
that  even  a  child  of  four  does  when  she  puts  her 
dolly  in  its  little  bed  and  carefully  tucks  it  up.  The 
one  act  is  rational,  the  other  is  irrational ;  one  is  the 
result  of  observation,  the  other  is  inherited  memory. 
178 


REASONABLE   BUT  UNREASONING 

There  is  much  in  a  hasty  view  of  animal  life  that 
looks  like  reason,  because  instinct  is  a  kind  of  intel- 
ligence and  it  acts  in  a  reasonable  manner.  But 
when  we  get  something  like  an  inside  view  of  the 
mind  of  the  lower  orders,  we  see  how  fundamentally 
it  differs  from  the  human.  And  we  get  this  view  of 
it,  not  in  the  ordinary  course  of  the  animal's  life, 
because  the  ordinary  course  of  its  life  is  appointed 
by  its  inherited  instincts,  but  under  exceptional  con- 
ditions, when  it  encounters  a  new  problem.  Now, 
when  a  reasoning  intelligence  is  confronted  by  a 
new  problem,  it  recognizes  it  as  such,  and,  having 
a  fund  of  knowledge  and  experience  to  draw  upon, 
it  proceeds  to  deal  with  it  accordingly.  Not  so  the 
animal ;  it  does  not  know  the  new  problem  when  it 
sees  it,  and  in  its  dealings  with  it  acts  much  like  a 
machine  that  was  made  to  do  some  other  work. 

Let  me  group  together  here  a  number  of  in- 
stances from  animal  life,  some  of  which  I  have 
given  elsewhere  in  my  writings,  which  show  how 
much  nearer  the  lower  orders  come  to  being  mere 
automata  than  they  come  to  being  reasoning 
intelligences. 

Take  the  case  of  the  robin  or  bluebird  that  may 
often  be  seen  in  the  spring,  day  after  day,  dashing 
itself  madly  against  a  window-pane,  fighting  its 
fancied  rival  there  in  its  own  reflected  image,  and 
never  discovering  that  it  is  being  fooled  even  after 
it  has  taken  a  peep  into  the  empty  room  inside 
179 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

through  a  broken  pane;  or  the  case  of  the  red 
squirrel  that  carried  nuts  all  one  day  and  put  them 
into  the  end  of  a  drain  pipe  that  ran  down  an  em- 
bankment wall  and  opened  on  to  a  pavement  below, 
where  the  nuts  behaved  much  as  the  water  did  that 
the  pipe  was  meant  to  carry  —  they  dropped  down 
and  rolled  away  across  the  street  pavement.  Or  the 
case  of  the  beaver  that  cut  down  a  tree  four  times 
because  the  tree  was  held  by  the  branches  of  other 
trees  at  the  top  so  that  it  could  not  fall,  but  only 
dropped  at  each  cutting  the  distance  of  the  piece 
cut  off.  What  finally  decided  the  beaver  to  desist, 
it  would  be  interesting  to  know.  Or  take  the  case  of 
Hamerton's  cow  that  in  affection  for  her  calf  licked 
its  stuffed  skin  till  it  ripped  open  and  the  hay  with 
which  it  was  stuffed  fell  out,  when  the  bereaved 
mother  proceeded  to  eat  the  hay  with  the  utmost 
matter-of-course  air. 

During  some  long-gone  time  in  the  history  of  the 
raccoon  it  seems  to  have  been  needful  for  it  to  wash 
its  food.  Maybe  the  habit  was  acquired  when  it 
lived  more  exclusively  than  if  does  now  upon  fresh- 
water mussels,  which  it  dug  out  of  the  mud  along 
inland  streams  and  lakes.  At  any  rate,  the  coon 
now  always  washes  its  food,  whether  it  needs  wash- 
ing or  not,  and  in  muddy  water  as  promptly  as  in 
clear,  so  that  the  Germans  call  the  coon  the  Wasch- 
bdr.  Ernest  Harold  Baynes  tells  me  that  he  has 
taken  young  coons  before  their  eyes  were  open,  and 
180 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

brought  them  up  on  milk,  and  that  the  first  time 
he  gave  them  solid  food,  one  of  them  took  it  and  ran 
to  a  pail  of  water  which  it  had  never  before  seen, 
thrust  the  food  into  it,  washed  it,  and  then  ate  it. 
When  no  water  was  within  reach,  he  has  seen  the 
coon  rub  the  food  a  moment  in  its  paws  and  then 
drop  it.  Dallas  Lore  Sharp  says  that  his  tame 
coon  would  go  through  the  motions  of  washing 
its  food  on  the  upturned  bottom  of  its  empty  tub, 
and  that  it  would  try  to  wash  its  oysters  in  the  straw 
on  the  floor  of  its  cage.  This  habit,  I  say,  doubtless 
had  its  origin  in  some  past  need  or  condition  of 
the  life  of  the  race  of  coons,  and  it  persists  after 
that  need  is  gone. 

The  story  that  is  told  of  the  brakeman  upon 
a  train  of  cars  in  Russia,  who  at  each  stop  of  the 
train  went  from  wheel  to  wheel,  as  was  once  the  cus- 
tom in  all  countries,  and  hit  it  a  sharp  blow  with  a 
hammer,  saying  on  being  asked  why  he  did  it,  "  I 
do  not  know,  sir,  it  is  my  orders,"  illustrates  very 
well  the  unreasoning  character  of  animal  instinct. 
The  animal  has  its  orders,  but  it  does  not  think  or 
ask  why. 

At  Bahia  Blanca,  in  South  America,  Darwin  saw 
a  bird,  the  casarita,  that  builds  its  nest  in  holes 
which  it  drills  in  the  banks  of  streams  like  our  king- 
fisher. At  one  place  where  he  was  stopping,  the  walls 
around  the  house  were  built  of  hardened  mud,  and 
were  bored  through  and  through  with  holes  by  these 
181 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

birds  in  their  attempts  to  form  their  nests.  The 
mud  wall  attracted  them  as  if  it  had  been  a  natural 
earth  bank,  and  in  trying  to  reach  the  proper  depth 
for  their  nests,  six  feet  or  more,  they  invariably 
came  through  and  out  on  the  other  side.  Still  they 
kept  on  drilling.  Says  Darwin  : 

"I  do  not  doubt  that  each  bird,  as  often  as  it 
came  to  daylight  on  the  opposite  side,  was  greatly 
surprised  at  the  marvelous  fact." 

I  do  not  suppose  the  bird  really  experienced  any 
feeling  of  surprise  at  all,  any  more  than  the  blue- 
bird above  referred  to  did,  when  it  looked  into  the 
vacant  room  and  did  not  see  the  object  of  its  wrath. 
The  feeling  of  surprise  comes  to  beings  that  under- 
stand the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  which  evi- 
dently the  lower  animals  do  not.  Had  the  casarita 
been  capable  of  the  feeling  of  surprise,  it  would  have 
been  capable  of  seeing  its  own  mistake. 

Our  high-hole  is  at  times  guilty  of  the  same  folly. 
When  he  drums  on  the  metal  ventilator  or  the  tin 
leader  upon  your  house,  he  has  found  a  new  thing, 
but  it  suits  his  purpose  to  make  a  noise  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  female  rather  better  than  the  dry 
stub  did.  And  when  he  excavates  a  limb  or  tree- 
trunk  for  his  nest,  he  acts  like  a  reasonable  being ; 
but  when  he  drills  a  hole  through  the  clapboards  of 
an  empty  building,  and,  not  finding  that  the  interior 
is  what  he  wants,  drills  again  and  again,  or  perfo- 
rates over  and  over  the  covering  of  an  ice-house  and 
182 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

lets  out  the  sawdust,  as  I  have  often  known  him  to 
do,  what  does  he  act  like  then  ? 

Such  instances  reveal  as  by  a  flash  of  light  the 
nature  of  animal  mentality  —  how  blindly,  how 
automatically,  the  beasts  act.  If  a  person  ever  be- 
haved in  that  way,  we  should  say  he  had  lost  his 
mind,  that  reason  was  dethroned.  We  should  not 
merely  say  he  was  unreasonable,  we  should  say  he 
was  insane. 

In  its  ordinary  course  of  life  the  animal  behaves 
in  a  reasonable  manner,  its  course  of  action  follows 
regular  lines.  Its  progenitors  have  followed  the 
same  lines  for  countless  generations ;  habit  has  worn 
a  groove.  But  when  a  new,  unheard-of  condition 
confronts  them,  then  there  is  no  groove  and  their 
activity  takes  these  irrational  forms.  When  the 
phcebe-bird  covers  her  nest  in  the  ledge  with  moss, 
she  does  a  reasonable  thing;  she  blends  it  with  the 
rock  in  a  way  that  is  both  good  art  and  good  strategy. 
Now,  if  this  were  the  result  of  reason,  when  she 
comes  to  the  porch  and  to  newly  hewn  timbers  she 
would  leave  the  moss  off,  because  here  it  betrays 
rather  than  conceals  her  nest.  But  she  sticks  to  her 
moss  wherever  she  goes. 

The  same  curious  blundering  may  be  seen  in  the 
insect  world.  For  instance,  the  trap-door  spiders  in 
California  make  their  nests  in  moss-covered  ground 
and  cover  the  lids  of  the  doors  with  green  growing 
moss.  An  English  naturalist,  as  reported  by  Jordan 
183 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

and  Kellogg  in  their  "  Animal  Life,"  removed  the 
moss  and  the  other  assimilative  material  from  the 
door  and  found  that  the  spider  always  replaced  it. 
Then  he  removed  it  again,  and  with  it  the  moss  and 
debris  from  the  ground  in  a  large  circle  about  the 
nest.  This,  of  course,  left  the  door  as  well  concealed 
as  before  because  it  made  it  one  with  its  surround- 
ings. Did  the  spider  leave  it  so?  Not  a  bit  of  it. 
She  fetched  more  moss  and  bits  of  bark  and  sticks 
and  covered  it  as  before,  which  gave  away  her 
secret  completely.  If  she  had  done  otherwise,  or 
had  covered  her  door  with  soil  so  as  to  make  it  one 
with  its  environment,  we  should  have  had  to  credit 
her  with  a  faculty  higher  than  instinct. 

While  speaking  of  insects  in  connection  with  this 
subject  of  the  automatic  character  of  animal  intel- 
ligence, I  am  reminded  of  the  habit  of  one  of  the 
solitary  wasps  as  described  by  Fabre.  When  the 
wasp  brings  an  insect  to  its  hole,  it  lays  it  down  at 
the  entrance  and  backs  down  into  the  hole,  appar- 
ently to  make  some  examination,  then  comes  out 
and  drags  in  its  prey.  Fabre  watched  his  opportu- 
nity, and,  when  the  wasp  had  disappeared  in  her 
den,  removed  her  game  a  few  inches  away.  The 
wasp  came  out,  hunted  for  her  bug,  found  it  and 
drew  it  back  to  its  former  position,  then  dropped  it 
and  retreated  into  her  den  as  before.  Fabre  again 
drew  the  insect  away,  and  again  the  wasp  came  out 
and  repeated  her  former  behavior.  Time  after 
184 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

time  this  little  scene  was  enacted;  the  wasp  must 
go  into  her  den  and  make  her  preliminary  survey 
before  dragging  in  her  prey.  That  habit  had  become 
fixed  and  there  could  be  no  deviation  from  it,  and 
yet  the  wasps  in  many  ways  seem  so  surprisingly 
intelligent ! 

Another  bee  upon  which  Fabre  experimented 
builds  a  cell  of  masonry,  fills  it  with  honey,  lays 
her  egg  in  it,  and  then  seals  it  up.  When  the  bee  was 
away,  Fabre  punctured  the  half-filled  cell  and  let 
the  honey  flow  out.  When  the  bee  returned,  she 
appeared  to  be  disturbed  to  find  her  honey  gone; 
she  examined  the  hole  through  which  it  had  escaped 
curiously,  but  made  no  attempt  to  repair  it,  and 
continued  to  pour  in  the  honey  the  same  as  before. 
After  she  had  brought  the  usual  quantity  —  the 
quantity  her  forbears  had  always  brought  —  she 
laid  her  egg  in  the  empty  cell  and  sealed  it  up. 
The  machine  had  done  its  work,  and  it  could  do 
nothing  not  down  in  the  ancestral  specifications. 

Dan  Beard  tells  of  an  ichneumon-fly  that  tried  all 
one  day  to  thrust  its  ovipositor  into  a  nail-head  in  a 
board  in  his  cabin,  mistaking  the  dark  spot  which 
the  nail-head  made  for  a  hole  that  led  to  the  burrow 
of  a  certain  wood-borer  which  is  the  host  of  the 
ichneumon.  Beard  thinks  the  fly  desisted  only  when 
it  had  seriously  dulled  the  point  of  its  instrument. 
I  am  reminded  of  one  of  our  well-known  wild  flowers, 
the  erythronium  or  fawn  lily,  that  will  persist  in  a 
185 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

certain  habit,  no  matter  how  many  times  defeated. 
This  plant  forms  a  new  bulb  each  spring  by  sending 
out  a  big  tap-root,  that  bores  down  into  the  ground 
and  plants  the  new  bulb  deeper  and  deeper  each 
season  till  the  required  depth  of  six  or  eight  inches 
is  reached.  When  the  ground  is  so  hard  that  the 
pioneer  root  cannot  penetrate  it,  it  wanders  in  loops 
over  the  surface  and  forms  the  new  bulb  no  deeper 
than  the  old  one  was,  and  keeps  this  habit  up 
spring  after  spring,  groping  its  way  blindly  about 
over  the  hard  surface. 

As  further  illustration  of  the  automatic  character 
of  animal  instinct,  take  the  case  of  the  migrating 
lemmings  in  Norway  and  Sweden.  At  times  the 
country  gets  overstocked  with  these  rodents,  when 
vast  numbers  of  them  migrate  down  from  the  hills 
toward  the  sea,  swimming  the  lakes  and  rivers  in 
their  way.  This  seems  a  reasonable  course,  and  is 
very  much  what  men  would  do  under  like  circum- 
stances; their  instincts  accord  with  reason.  But 
mark  what  follows :  when  the  lemmings  reach  the 
sea,  they  plunge  in  and  swim  till  they  perish.  Hav- 
ing got  in  motion,  they  go  on,  like  any  other  natural 
force,  till  they  have  spent  themselves.  It  is  said  that 
steamships  have  at  times  encountered  these  bands 
of  swimming  rodents  and  been  half  an  hour  in 
steaming  through  them.  I  do  not  suppose  they 
mistake  the  sea  for  another  lake  or  river  such  as  they 
have  already  crossed ;  I  do  not  suppose  any  notions 
186 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

or  comparisons  exist  in  their  minds  about  it.  An 
impulse  to  migrate,  which  is  like  a  decree  of  nature, 
has  taken  possession  of  them,  and  they  obey  it 
blindly,  to  their  own  destruction.  These  incidents, 
which  recur  at  intervals,  afford  another  illustration 
of  how  radically  animal  instinct  differs  from  human 
reason.  It  is  a  kind  of  fate. 

Instinct  may  be  thwarted  in  its  efforts,  but  it 
cannot  be  convinced  that  its  effort  is  wrong,  or  has 
failed.  One  spring,  as  I  have  elsewhere  related,  a 
pair  of  English  sparrows,  in  searching  for  a  nesting- 
place,  tried  to  effect  an  entrance  into  the  interior 
of  a  horizontal  timber  upon  my  porch,  through  a 
large  crack.  Not  being  able  to  do  this,  they  brought 
straws  and  weed  stalks  and  filled  up  the  crack  from 
one  end  of  the  porch  to  the  other,  working  at  it  day 
after  day  notwithstanding  their  rubbish  was  repeat- 
edly swept  away.  It  was  nesting-time,  the  opening 
in  the  timber  stimulated  them,  and  they  kept  going 
as  did  the  birds  I  have  mentioned  above.  I  do  not 
suppose  they  had  any  knowledge  that  their  efforts 
were  futile;  they  only  had  the  impulse  to  build,  and 
of  that  impulse  they  did  not  know  the  purpose. 

I  have  not  cited  the  foregoing  incidents  to  show 
the  stupidity  of  bird  or  beast  or  insect  —  that  were 
as  great  an  error  as  to  seek  to  prove  their  reasoning 
powers  —  but  simply  to  illustrate  the  automatic 
character  of  animal  behavior;  to  show  that,  if  the 
lower  orders  are  not  mere  automata,  as  Des  Cartes 
187 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

long  ago  taught  and  as  Huxley  came  to  believe, 
adding  only  the  qualifying  adjective  "  conscious," 
making  them  "  conscious  automata,"  —  then  they 
come  so  near  to  it  that  it  is  difficult  without  exag- 
geration to  credit  them  with  any  higher  powers. 
At  any  rate,  they  reveal  an  order  of  mind  that  dif- 
fers fundamentally  from  our  own.  Unless  we  are 
to  abandon  that  comparison  and  classification 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  our  knowledge,  we  must 
call  it  by  another  name  —  we  must  call  it  blind  in- 
stinct. It  does  not  see  the  why  of  anything  which 

it  does. 

ii 

My  dog  and  I  are  boon  companions.  I  can  live 
with  him  almost  as  with  a  brother,  and  yet  I  see 
him  across  a  gulf.  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  that  gulf, 
for  example,  when  I  see  by  his  manner  that  he 
wants  to  lie  down  before  the  open  fire,  but,  the 
poker  or  a  stick  of  wood  being  in  the  way,  instead 
of  removing  or  pushing  it  to  one  side,  as  he  could 
so  easily  do,  he  sits  or  half  reclines  there,  and  looks 
helplessly  at  the  obstacle  in  his  way.  I  get  up  and 
remove  it  and  he  lies  down.  The  removal  of  that 
poker  on  his  part  would  require  a  certain  detach- 
ment and  viewing  of  himself  in  relation  to  other 
things,  of  which  he  is  not  capable;  and  yet  I 
know,  had  the  obstacle  barred  the  way  to  the 
retreat  of  a  mouse  or  a  chipmunk,  he  would  have 
removed  it  in  a  hurry,  because  the  scent  of  the 
188 


REASONABLE   BUT  UNREASONING 

game  would  have  stimulated  his  instincts,  or  set 
up  a  reflex  action,  and  put  his  paws  in  vigorous 
motion.  He  will,  in  an  awkward  kind  of  way,  try  to 
remove  the  burrs  and  bidens  seeds  from  his  coat, 
and  bite  at  a  sliver  in  his  foot  —  these  things  irritate 
him  and  hence  sustain  a  much  closer  relation  to  him 
than  did  the  poker  or  the  stick  of  wood ;  his  instinct 
of  self-defense  is  more  or  less  aroused  by  them. 

One's  dog  will  come  to  cover  when  it  rains,  but 
can  one  think  of  him  as  putting  on  any  cover 
to  keep  off  the  rain,  or  as  bringing  in  his  blanket 
out  of  the  wet,  unless  especially  trained  ?  All  such 
minor  human  acts  are  quite  beyond  the  capacity 
of  our  wild  or  domestic  animals,  requiring  as  they 
do  a  certain  self-detachment  and  viewing  of  things 
as  they  are  in  their  relations. 

Touch  the  spring  of  an  animal's  instinct  or  inher- 
ited habit,  and  it  responds ;  but  appeal  to  its  power 
of  independent  thought,  and  it  is,  for  the  most  part, 
as  helpless  as  any  other  machine. 

Birds  will  remove  obstacles  from  their  nests,  and 
a  setting  hen  will  steal  eggs  from  a  nest  within  reach 
of  her  own.  Such  behavior  shows  only  how  acute 
and  active  their  instincts  are  during  the  crisis  of 
propagation. 

The  lower  animals  all  seem  to  be  upon  the  same 

plane ;  they  are  all  yet  at  the  breast  of  Nature,  as 

it  were,  directly  and  unconsciously  dependent  upon 

her,  while  man  has  long  since  been  weaned  and 

189 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

separated  from  her.  He  has  moved  into  another 
plane  of  being,  still  dependent,  of  course,  upon  the 
Nature  of  which  he  is,  in  a  measure,  the  master.  He 
still  runs  down  into  the  region  of  reflex  action,  but 
he  also  runs  up  into  the  region  of  choice  and  reason 
and  invention,  where  the  animal  does  not  follow  him. 

Man  is  emancipated,  the  animal  is  in  bondage. 
And  yet  man  surely  came  by  the  way  of  the  lower 
animals.  In  these  forms  he  tarried,  these  are  his 
kith  and  kin;  their  marks  are  still  upon  him.  But 
how  he  ever  left  them  so  far  behind,  who  can  tell? 
How  did  he  cut  loose  from  them  ?  Why  is  my  dog 
on  one  side  of  the  gulf  and  I  on  the  other  ?  Why 
was  he  left  behind  by  the  impulse  that  brought 
me  over?  Why  are  we  not  either  all  dogs  or  all 
men?  The  wave  has  traveled,  but  the  water  has 
stayed  behind.  What  started  the  wave?  Where 
is  the  source  of  the  force  it  represents  ?  This  man- 
impulse  that  has  never  been  stayed,  what  or  who 
started  it  ?  Through  good  and  through  evil  report 
has  it  come,  through  slime  and  ooze,  and  reptile 
and  fish,  through  monsters  and  dragons,  and  cat- 
aclysm, and  cosmic  winters  and  summers,  and  has 
arrived  safely  at  last  with  man  on  its  crest. 

Of  course  the  animals  show  many  human  traits ; 
their  whole  emotional  life  —  and  it  is  doubtful  if 
they  have  any  other  —  seems  to  run  parallel  to  our 
own.  They  live  in  feeling,  not  in  thought.  Huxley 
says  that  this  is  because  they  have  no  language. 
190 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

They  have  no  language  because  their  brains  are 
not  developed  to  the  language  point.  But  to  have 
emotions  and  feelings  and  associations  and  repul- 
sions, the  sense  of  direction,  the  sense  of  home, 
the  love  of  offspring,  the  fear  of  enemies,  we  do  not 
need  a  language,  we  need  only  the  senses. 

The  animals  show  human  traits  every  hour  in 
the  day,  but  my  contention  is  that  they  do  not  show 
anything  like  human  intelligence.  The  two  pairs 
of  orioles  I  saw  one  day  come  in  collision  as  I  was 
passing  along  the  road  behaved,  I  thought,  in  a 
very  human  way.  Each  couple  had  a  nest  in  elm 
trees  that  stood  near  one  another  on  the  roadside, 
and  were,  of  course,  more  or  less  jealous  of  each 
other's  rights.  As  I  was  passing,  the  two  females 
had  come  to  blows  in  a  clump  of  willows  a  few 
yards  away  and  were  having  a  lively  scrap.  In- 
stantly the  two  males  appeared,  hurrying  side  by 
side  to  the  scene  of  the  squabble  of  their  mates. 
Just  what  took  place  on  their  arrival  I  could  not 
clearly  make  out,  except  that  the  females  separated 
and  the  males  came  to  blows.  After  sparring  a 
moment  or  two,  they  alighted  on  the  wire  fence  a 
few  feet  apart,  where  they  eyed  each  other  sharply 
and  exchanged  some  very  emphatic  words,  the 
purport  of  which  I  could  only  guess.  How  very 
human,  I  thought,  that  two  husbands,  in  inter- 
fering in  a  quarrel  between  their  wives,  should  get 
each  other  by  the  ears!  My  neighbor  and  I  got 
191 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

into  a  "scrap  "  in  trying  to  separate  our  dogs! 
exercising  more  reason  in  the  matter  than  one  does 
on  like  human  occasions. 

When  Hobhouse,  the  English  psychologist  and 
philosopher,  was  trying  to  teach  his  elephant  how 
to  draw  a  bolt  to  open  a  box  that  contained  a  sweet 
morsel,  the  elephant  used  to  lose  its  temper  at  times 
and  bang  the  box  around  like  a  petulant  child  — 
a  very  human  proceeding,  I  thought. 

My  son  had  a  duck  that  one  fall  behaved,  as  it 
seemed  to  me,  in  quite  a  human  way.  He  had  a 
wild  strain  in  him,  and  was  brought  up  near  the 
sea.  He  had  lost  his  mate  during  the  summer,  and 
when  fall  came,  I  suppose  the  migrating  instinct 
began  to  stir  in  him.  He  seemed  uneasy  and  would 
leave  the  hens  and  wander  off  alone,  softly  calling 
as  he  walked.  One  night  in  early  October  he  was 
missing,  and  we  fancied  a  fox  had  snapped  him 
up  in  the  twilight.  Days  passed,  till  one  evening 
one  of  the  men  saw  a  solitary  duck  flying  past  low 
over  the  buildings  and  fruit  trees  upon  the  lawn. 
He  said  it  looked  like  our  lost  duck.  A  few  days 
later  the  report  came  from  our  neighbor  of  a  very 
tame  wild  duck  upon  the  river.  The  duck  had 
come  ashore  near  his  house,  and  he,  not  having 
a  gun,  had  tried  to  capture  it  by  a  slip-noose  at  the 
end  of  a  pole.  But  the  duck  took  fright  and  flew 
away  down  the  river.  A  day  or  two  later  it  ap- 
peared again  near  our  neighbor's  house,  and  now, 
192 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

having  learned  that  it  was  probably  our  lost  duck, 
our  neighbor  set  out  to  capture  it  by  the  use  of  corn, 
and  finally  succeeded.  He  then  clipped  one  wing 
and  turned  it  loose.  The  drake,  failing  in  his  efforts 
to  fly,  was  a  changed  bird ;  disaster  made  him  think 
of  home,  and  the  next  day  at  twilight  he  turned  his 
steps  thitherward.  He  came  slowly  laboring  up  the 
hill,  very  silent  and  humble,  and  allowed  himself  to 
be  picked  up.  It  was  hardly  the  return  of  a  prodi- 
gal, but  it  was  the  coming  back  of  a  humbled  and 
disappointed  wanderer. 

in 

Animal  conduct  parallels  human  conduct  in 
many  particulars,  but  to  say  that  it  is  the  result 
of  the  same  mental  processes  is,  I  believe,  to  make  a 
capital  mistake.  Why,  inorganic  nature  often  seems 
to  copy  human  methods,  too,  as,  for  instance,  in  a 
natural  bridge.  Behold  on  what  sound  mechanical 
principles  the  rude  arch  or  span  is  built  up !  Shall 
we  therefore  ascribe  the  faculty  of  reason  to  the 
rocks  ?  Or  behold  how  the  mountain-walls  are  but- 
tressed, the  overhanging  cliff  supported  —  it  is  all 
good  engineering.  In  nature  such  things  are  the 
inevitable  result  of  irrefragable  mechanical  laws; 
with  the  lower  animals  they  are  the  result  of  in- 
stinct; with  man  they  are  the  result  of  reason. 

I  notice  that  when  the  phoebe-bird  builds  her 
nest  on  the  steep  surface  of  a  ledge,  she  begins  like 
193 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

a  true  mechanic  and  widens  her  foundation  gradu- 
ally as  she  comes  upward,  till  she  has  a  shelf  of  mud 
wide  enough  to  stand  it  on.  It  is  all  fit  and  well 
considered.  We  may  think  that  the  bird  reasoned, 
and  fail  to  see  how  inevitable  all  such  things  are 
in  organic  as  well  as  in  inorganic  nature.  The  trees 
buttress  themselves  at  their  base  by  a  circle  of  high 
curving  roots,  and  how  their  branches  are  braced 
and  reinforced  where  they  leave  the  trunk ! 

The  beaver  building  its  dam  seems  like  a  rea- 
sonable being,  and  L.  H.  Morgan,  who  studied 
this  animal  in  its  native  haunts  in  Wisconsin,  and 
wrote  the  best  monograph  upon  the  subject  that  has 
ever  appeared,  thinks  that  it  does  reason;  but 
one  incident  alone  which  he  mentions  shows  by 
what  unreasoning  instinct  the  animal  is  guided. 
He  saw  where  the  beavers  had  built  a  dam  by  the 
trunk  of  a  tree  that  had  fallen  across  a  stream,  but 
instead  of  placing  their  sticks  and  brush  against 
the  upper  side  of  the  tree,  so  as  to  avail  themselves 
of  it  in  resisting  the  force  of  the  current,  they  had 
placed  them  below  it,  so  that  the  tree  helped  them 
not  at  all.  Poor  things!  they  encountered  a  new 
problem.  They  could  build  a  dam,  but  they  could 
not  take  advantage  of  the  aid  which  the  wind  had 
offered  them.  Probably,  had  they  felled  the  tree 
themselves,  their  instinct  would  not  have  blundered 
so  in  dealing  with  it. 

As  animals  get  along  very  well  without  hands 
194 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

and  tools,  so  they  get  along  very  well  without  reason. 
Nature  has  given  them  tools  in  their  organization  in 
a  sense  that  she  has  not  given  them  to  man — special 
appliances  developed  to  meet  special  needs,  such  as 
hooks,  spears,  saws,  files,  chisels,  barbs,  drills,  shears, 
probes,  stings,  drums,  fiddles,  cymbals,  harps,  glues, 
pastes,  armors,  stilts,  pouches,  all  related  to  some 
need  of  the  creature's  life ;  and  in  the  same  way 
she  has  given  them  the  quality  of  reason  in  their  in- 
stincts. She  has  given  the  beaver  knives  and  chisels 
in  his  teeth,  she  has  given  the  woodpeckers  drills  in 
their  beaks,  she  has  given  the  leaf -cutters  shears 
in  their  mandibles,  she  has  given  the  bees  .baskets 
on  their  hips,  she  has  given  stilts  to  the  waders  and 
bills  that  are  spears,  to  birds  of  prey  claws  that  are 
hooks,  and  to  various  creatures  weapons  of  offense 
and  defense  that  man  cannot  boast  of.  Man  has 
no  tools  or  ornamental  appendages  in  his  organiza- 
tion, but  he  has  that  which  can  make  and  use  these 
things  —  arms  and  hands,  and  reason  to  back  them 
up.  I  can  crack  my  nut  with  a  stone  or  hammer,  but 
the  squirrel  has  teeth  that  help  him  to  the  kernel. 
Each  of  us  is  armed  as  best  suits  his  needs.  The 
mink  and  the  otter  can  take  their  fish  in  the  water, 
but  I  have  to  have  a  net,  or  a  hook,  or  a  weapon 
of  some  kind  when  I  catch  fish.  The  woodpecker 
can  chisel  out  a  hole  in  a  tree  for  his  nest  or  his 
house,  with  only  the  weapon  nature  gave  him,  but 
he  cannot  make  a  door  to  it,  or  patch  it  if  it  be- 
195 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

comes  leaky.  The  trap-door  spider  can  build  a  door 
to  her  den,  because  this  instinct  is  one  of  her  spe- 
cial equipments,  and  is  necessary  to  her  well-being. 
To  the  woodpecker  such  a  door  is  not  a  necessity. 
There  are  but  few  things  we  could  teach  the 
animals  in  their  own  proper  sphere.  We  could 
give  them  hints  when  they  are  confronted  by  new 
problems,  as  in  the  case  of  the  beaver  above  re- 
ferred to,  but  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature  these 
new  problems  rarely  turn  up.  We  could  teach  the 
beaver  a  little  more  system  in  the  use  of  his  mate- 
rial, but  this  would  be  of  slight  value  to  him;  his 
dam,  made  very  much  as  a  flood  makes  a  dam  of 
driftwood  and  mud,  answers  his  purpose.  Could 
we  teach  the  birds  where  to  find  a  milder  clime,  or 
the  dog  how  to  find  his  way  home,  or  the  horse 
how  to  find  water  in  the  desert,  or  the  muskrat 
or  the  beaver  how  to  plan  and  construct  houses 
better  suited  to  their  purposes  ?  Could  we  teach  the 
birds  how  better  to  hide  their  nests  ?  Do  the  conies 
amid  the  rocks,  that  cure  their  hay  before  storing 
it  up  for  winter  use,  need  to  take  counsel  of  us  ?  or 
the  timid  hare  that  sleeps  with  its  eyes  open,  or  the 
sluggish  turtle  that  covers  her  eggs  in  the  warm 
sand?  Can  we  instruct  the  honey-bee  in  her  own 
arts,  or  the  ant  in  hers  ?  The  spider  does  not  need 
to  learn  of  us  how  to  weave  a  net,  nor  the  leaf -roll- 
ing insect  to  be  taught  the  use  of  stitches.  I  do  not 
know  that  we  first  learned  the  art  of  paper-making 
196 


REASONABLE  BUT  UNREASONING 

from  the  hornets,  but  certain  it  is  that  they  hold  the 
original  patent  for  making  paper  from  wood-pulp; 
and  the  little  spiders  navigated  the  air  before  the 
first  balloon  was  made,  and  the  Physalia  hoisted 
her  sail  long  before  the  first  seaman  spread  his,  and 
the  ant-lion  dug  his  pit  and  the  carpenter-bee  bored 
his  hole  long  before  man  had  learned  these  arts. 
Indeed,  many  of  the  arts  and  crafts  of  .man  exist  or 
are  foreshadowed  in  the  world  of  life  below  him. 
There  is  no  tool-user  among  the  lower  animals  that 
I  know  of,  unless  we  regard  one  of  the  solitary 
wasps  as  such  when  she  uses  a  pebble  with  which 
to  pack  down  the  earth  over  her  den;  but  there 
are  many  curious  devices  and  makeshifts  of  one 
kind  and  another  among  both  plants  and  animals 
for  defense,  for  hiding,  for  scattering  of  seeds,  for 
cross-fertilization,  etc.  The  wild  creatures  have  all 
been  to  school  to  an  old  and  wise  teacher,  Dame 
Nature,  who  has  been  keeping  school  now,  as  near 
as  we  can  calculate,  for  several  million  years.  And 
she  is  not  an  indulgent  teacher,  though  a  very  pa- 
tient one.  Her  rod  is  tooth  and  claw  and  hunger 
and  cold  and  drought  and  flood,  and  her  penalty  is 
usually  death.  Her  ways  are  not  all  ways  of  pleas- 
antness, nor  are  all  her  paths  paths  of  peace. 

When  the  animals  are  confronted  by  conditions 

made  by  man,  then  man  can  give  them  valuable 

hints.    We  could  teach  the  cliff  swallows  better 

than  to  stick  their  mud  nests  on  boards  that  have 

197 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

been  planed  and  painted,  because  sooner  or  later 
they  are  sure  to  fall.  We  could  teach  the  cunning 
crow  not  to  be  afraid  of  a  string  stretched  across  the 
cornfield,  and  the  wary  fox  not  to  be  barred  from 
a  setting  fowl  by  a  hoop  of  iron,  and  we  could  teach 
him  to  elude  the  hounds  by  taking  to  the  highway 
and  jumping  into  the  hind  end  of  a  passing  farm 
wagon  on  the  way  to  the  mill  and  curling  up  among 
the  meal-bags,  as  Mr.  Roberts's  fox  did.  We  could 
instruct  the  bird  with  broken  legs  how  to  make 
clay  casts  for  them,  and  to  give  the  clay  a  chance 
to  harden,  as  the  woodcock  of  Dr.  Long  did.  The 
wild  animals  do  not  need  our  medicine  because 
they  are  probably  never  ill,  and  only  upon  very  rare 
occasions  could  our  surgery  be  of  use  to  them.  The 
domestic  animals  sometimes  need  a  midwife,  but 
probably  the  wild  creatures  never  do.  They  all 
learn  slowly  the  things  that  it  is  necessary  for  them 
to  know.  In  time,  I  have  no  doubt,  the  migrating 
birds  will  learn  to  avoid  the  lighthouses  along  the 
coast,  where  so  many  of  them  now  meet  their  death. 
Animals  know  what  they  have  to  know  in  order 
that  the  species  may  continue,  and  they  know  little 
else.  They  do  not  have  to  reason  because  they  do 
not  progress  as  man  does.  They  have  only  to  live 
and  multiply,  and  for  this  their  instincts  suffice 
them.  Neither  do  they  require  any  of  our  moral 
sentiments.  These  would  be  a  hindrance  rather  than 
a  help,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  they  do  not  have  them. 


THE  GRIST  OF  THE  GODS 

ABOUT  all  we  have  in  mind  when  we  think 
of  the  earth  is  this  thin  pellicle  of  soil  with 
which  the  granite  framework  of  the  globe  is  clothed 
—  a  red  and  brown  film  of  pulverized  and  oxidized 
rock,  scarcely  thicker,  relatively,  than  the  paint  or 
enamel  which  some  women  put  on  their  cheeks,  and 
which  the  rains  often  wash  away  as  a  tear  washes 
off  the  paint  and  powder.  But  it  is  the  main  thing 
to  us.  Out  of  it  we  came  and  unto  it  we  return. 
"Earth  to  earth,  and  dust  to  dust."  The  dust  be- 
comes warm  and  animated  for  a  little  while,  takes 
on  form  and  color,  stalks  about  recuperating  itself 
from  its  parent  dust  underfoot,  and  then  fades  and 
is  resolved  into  the  original  earth  elements.  We 
are  built  up  out  of  the  ground  quite  as  literally  as 
the  trees  are,  but  not  quite  so  immediately.  The 
vegetable  is  between  us  and  the  soil,  but  our  depend- 
ence is  none  the  less  real.  "As  common  as  dust" 
is  one  of  our  sayings,  but  the  common,  the  universal, 
is  always  our  mainstay  in  this  world.  When  we 
see  the  dust  turned  into  fruit  and  flowers  and  grain 
by  that  intangible  thing  called  vegetable  life,  or  into 
the  bodies  of  men  and  women  by  the  equally  mys- 
199 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

terious  agency  of  animal  life,  we  think  better  of  it. 
The  trembling  gold  of  the  pond-lily's  heart,  and 
its  petals  like  carved  snow,  are  no  more  a  trans- 
formation of  a  little  black  muck  and  ooze  by  the 
chemistry  of  the  sunbeam  than  our  bodies  and 
minds,  too,  are  a  transformation  of  the  soil  under- 
foot. 

We  are  rooted  to  the  air  through  our  lungs  and 
to  the  soil  through  our  stomachs.  We  are  walking 
trees  and  floating  plants.  The  soil  which  in  one 
form  we  spurn  with  our  feet,  and  in  another  take 
into  our  mouths  and  into  our  blood  —  what  a  com- 
posite product  it  is!  It  is  the  grist  out  of  which 
our  bread  of  life  is  made,  the  grist  which  the  mills 
of  the  gods,  the  slow  patient  gods  of  Erosion,  have 
been  so  long  grinding  —  grinding  probably  more 
millions  of  years  than  we  have  any  idea  of.  The 
original  stuff,  the  pulverized  granite,  was  probably 
not  very  nourishing,  but  the  fruitful  hand  of  time 
has  made  it  so.  It  is  the  kind  of  grist  that  improves 
with  the  keeping,  and  the  more  the  meal-worms 
have  worked  in  it,  the  better  the  bread.  Indeed, 
until  it  has  been  eaten  and  digested  by  our  faithful 
servitors  the  vegetables,  it  does  not  make  the  loaf 
that  is  our  staff  of  life.  The  more  death  has  gone 
into  it,  the  more  life  comes  out  of  it;  the  more  it 
is  a  cemetery,  the  more  it  becomes  a  nursery ;  the 
more  the  rocks  perish,  the  more  the  fields  flourish. 

This  story  of  the  soil  appeals  to  the  imagination. 
200 


THE  GRIST  OF  THE  GODS 

To  have  a  bit  of  earth  to  plant,  to  hoe,  to  delve  in, 
is  a  rare  privilege.  If  one  stops  to  consider,  one  can- 
not turn  it  with  his  spade  without  emotion.  We 
look  back  with  the  mind's  eye  through  the  vista  of 
geologic  time  and  we  see  islands  and  continents  of 
barren,  jagged  rocks,  not  a  grain  of  soil  anywhere. 
We  look  again  and  behold  a  world  of  rounded  hills 
and  fertile  valleys  and  plains,  depth  of  soil  where 
before  were  frowning  rocks.  The  hand  of  time 
with  its  potent  fingers  of  heat,  frost,  cloud,  and  air 
has  passed  slowly  over  the  scene,  and  the  miracle  is 
done.  The  rocks  turn  to  herbage,  the  fetid  gases 
to  the  breath  of  flowers.  The  mountain  melts  down 
into  a  harvest  field;  volcanic  scoria  changes  into 
garden  mould;  where  towered  a  cliff  now  basks  a 
green  slope ;  where  the  strata  yawned  now  bubbles 
a  fountain ;  where  the  earth  trembled,  verdure  now 
undulates.  Your  lawn  and  your  meadow  are  built 
up  of  the  ruins  of  the  fore  world.  The  leanness  of 
granite  and  gneiss  has  become  the  fat  of  the  land. 
What  transformation  and  promotion! — the  decrep- 
itude of  the  hills  becoming  the  strength  of  the 
plains,  the  decay  of  the  heights  resulting  in  the 
renewal  of  the  valleys ! 

Many  of  our  hills  are  but  the  stumps  of  moun- 
tains which  the  hand  of  time  has  cut  down.  Hence 
we  may  say  that  if  God  made  the  mountains,  time 
made  the  hills. 

What  adds  to  the  wonder  of  the  earth's  grist  is 
201 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

that  the  millstones  that  did  the  work  and  are  still 
doing  it  are  the  gentle  forces  that  career  above 
our  heads  —  the  sunbeam,  the  cloud,  the  air,  the 
frost.  The  rain's  gentle  fall,  the  air's  velvet  touch, 
the  sun's  noiseless  rays,  the  frost's  exquisite  crys- 
tals, these  combined  are  the  agents  that  crush  the 
rocks  and  pulverize  the  mountains,  and  transform 
continents  of  sterile  granite  into  a  world  of  fertile 
soils.  It  is  as  if  baby  fingers  did  the  work  of  giant 
powder  and  dynamite.  Give  the  clouds  and  the 
sunbeams  time  enough,  and  the  Alps  and  the  Andes 
disappear  before  them,  or  are  transformed  into 
plains  where  corn  may  grow  and  cattle  graze.  The 
snow  falls  as  softly  as  down  and  lies  almost  as 
lightly,  yet  the  crags  crumble  beneath  it;  com- 
pacted by  gravity,  out  of  it  grew  the  tremendous 
ice  sheet  that  ground  off  the  mountain  summits, 
that  scooped  out  lakes  and  valleys,  and  modeled 
our  northern  landscapes  as  the  sculptor  his  clay 
image. 

Not  only  are  the  mills  of  the  gods  grinding  here, 
but  the  great  cosmic  mill  in  the  sidereal  heavens 
is  grinding  also,  and  some  of  its  dust  reaches  our 
planet.  Cosmic  dust  is  apparently  falling  on  the 
earth  at  all  times.  It  is  found  in  the  heart  of  hail- 
stones and  in  Alpine  snows,  and  helps  make  up 
the  mud  of  the  ocean  floors. 

During  the  unthinkable  time  of  the  revolution 
of  the  earth  around  the  sun,  the  amount  of  cosmic 
202 


THE  GRIST  OF  THE   GODS 

matter  that  has  fallen  upon  its  surface  from  out 
the  depths  of  space  must  be  enormous.  It  certainly 
must  enter  largely  into  the  composition  of  the  soil 
and  of  the  sedimentary  rocks.  Celestial  dirt  we 
may  truly  call  it,  star  dust,  in  which  we  plant  our 
potatoes  and  grain  and  out  of  which  Adam  was 
made,  and  every  son  of  man  since  Adam  —  the 
divine  soil  in  very  fact,  the  garden  of  the  Eternal, 
contributed  to  by  the  heavens  above  and  all  the 
vital  forces  below,  incorruptible,  forever  purifying 
itself,  clothing  the  rocky  framework  of  the  globe 
as  with  flesh  and  blood,  making  the  earth  truly 
a  mother  with  a  teeming  fruitful  womb,  and  her 
hills  veritable  mammary  glands.  The  iron  in  the 
fruit  and  vegetables  we  eat,  which  thence  goes  into 
our  blood,  may,  not  very  long  ago,  have  formed 
a  part  of  the  cosmic  dust  that  drifted  for  untold 
ages  along  the  highways  of  planets  and  suns. 

The  soil  underfoot,  or  that  we  turn  with  our 
plow,  how  it  thrills  with  life  or  the  potencies  of 
life!  What  a  fresh,  good  odor  it  exhales  when  we 
turn  it  with  our  spade  or  plow  in  spring!  It  is 
good.  No  wonder  children  and  horses  like  to  eat  it  I 

How  inert  and  dead  it  looks,  yet  what  silent, 
potent  fermentations  are  going  on  there  —  millions 
and  trillions  of  minute  organisms  ready  to  further 
your  scheme  of  agriculture  or  horticulture.  Plant 
your  wheat  or  your  corn  in  it,  and  behold  the  mir- 
acle of  a  birth  of  a  plant  or  a  tree.  How  it  pushes 
203 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

up,  fed  and  stimulated  by  the  soil,  through  the 
agency  of  heat  and  moisture!  It  makes  visible  to 
the  eye  the  life  that  is  latent  or  held  in  suspense 
there  in  the  cool,  impassive  ground.  The  acorn,  the 
chestnut,  the  maple  keys,  have  but  to  lie  on  the 
surface  of  the  moist  earth  to  feel  its  power  and 
send  down  rootlets  to  meet  it. 

From  one  point  of  view,  what  a  ruin  the  globe 
is !  —  worn  and  crumbled  and  effaced  beyond 
recognition,  had  we  known  it  in  its  youth.  Where 
once  towered  mountains  are  now  only  their  stumps 
—  low,  fertile  hills  or  plains.  Shake  down  your 
great  city  with  its  skyscrapers  till  most  of  its  build- 
ings are  heaps  of  ruins  with  grass  and  herbage 
growing  upon  them,  and  you  have  a  hint  of  what 
has  happened  to  the  earth. 

Again,  one  cannot  but  reflect  what  a  sucked 
orange  the  earth  will  be  in  the  course  of  a  few 
more  centuries.  Our  civilization  is  terribly  expen- 
sive to  all  its  natural  resources ;  one  hundred  years 
of  modern  life  doubtless  exhausts  its  stores  more 
than  a  millennium  of  the  life  of  antiquity.  Its  coal 
and  oil  will  be  about  used  up,  all  its  mineral  wealth 
greatly  depleted,  the  fertility  of  its  soil  will  have 
been  washed  into  the  sea  through  the  drainage  of 
its  cities,  its  wild  game  will  be  nearly  extinct,  its 
primitive  forests  gone,  and  soon  how  nearly  bank- 
rupt the  planet  will  be ! 

There  is  no  better  illustration  of  the  way  decay 
204 


THE  GRIST  OF  THE  GODS 

and  death  play  into  the  hands  of  life  than  the  soil 
underfoot.  The  earth  dies  daily  and  has  done  so 
through  countless  ages.  But  life  and  youth  spring 
forever  from  its  decay;  indeed,  could  not  spring 
at  all  till  the  decay  began.  All  the  soil  was  once 
rock,  perhaps  many  times  rock,  as  the  water  that 
flows  by  may  have  been  many  times  ice. 

The  soft,  slow,  aerial  forces,  how  long  and  pa- 
tiently they  have  worked !  Oxygen  has  played  its 
part  in  the  way  of  oxidation  and  dioxidation  of 
minerals.  Carbon  or  carbonic  acid  has  played  its 
part,  hydrogen  has  played  its.  Even  granite  yields 
slowly  but  surely  to  the  action  of  rain-water.  The 
sun  is  of  course  the  great  dynamo  that  runs  the 
earth  machinery  and,  through  moisture  and  the  air 
currents,  reduces  the  rocks  to  soil.  Without  solar 
heat  we  should  have  no  rain,  and  without  rain  we 
should  have  no  soil.  The  decay  of  a  mountain  makes 
a  hill  of  fertile  fields.  The  soil,  as  we  know  it,  is 
the  product  of  three  great  processes  — mechanical, 
chemical,  and  vital  —  which  have  been  going  on  for 
untold  ages.  The  mechanical  we  see  in  the  friction 
of  winds  and  waves  and  the  grinding  of  glaciers, 
and  in  the  destructive  effects  of  heat  and  cold  upon 
the  rocks;  the  chemical  in  the  solvent  power  of 
rain-water  and  of  water  charged  with  various  acids 
and  gases.  The  soil  is  rarely  the  color  of  the  under- 
lying rock  from  which  it  came,  by  reason  of  the 
action  of  the  various  gases  of  the  atmosphere.  Iron 
205 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

is  black,  but  when  turned  into  rust  by  the  oxygen 
of  the  air,  it  is  red. 

The  vital  processes  that  have  contributed  to  the 
soil  we  see  going  on  about  us  in  the  decay  of  animal 
and  vegetable  matter.  It  is  this  process  that  gives 
the  humus  to  the  soil,  in  fact,  almost  humanizes 
it,  making  it  tender  and  full  of  sentiment  and  mem- 
ories, as  it  were,  so  that  it  responds  more  quickly 
to  our  needs  and  to  our  culture.  The  elements  of 
the  soil  remember  all  those  forms  of  animal  and 
vegetable  life  of  which  they  once  made  a  part,  and 
they  take  them  on  again  the  more  readily.  Hence 
the  quick  action  of  wood  ashes  upon  vegetable  life. 
Iron  and  lime  and  phosphorus  that  have  once  been 
taken  up  by  growing  plants  and  trees  seem  to  have 
acquired  new  properties,  and  are  the  more  readily 
taken  up  again. 

The  soil,  like  mankin'd,  profits  by  experience,  and 
grows  deep  and  mellow  with  age.  Turn  up  the 
cruder  subsoil  to  the  sun  and  air  and  to  vegetable 
life,  and  after  a  time  its  character  is  changed;  it 
becomes  more  gentle  and  kindly  and  more  fertile. 

All  things  are  alike  or  under  the  same  laws  - 
the  rocks,  the  soil,  the  soul  of  man,  the  trees  in  the 
forest,  the  stars  in  the  sky.  We  have  fertility,  depth, 
geniality,  in  the  ground  underfoot,  on  the  same 
terms  upon  which  we  have  these  things  in  human 
life  and  character. 

We  hardly  realize  how  life  itself  has  stored  up 
206 


THE  GRIST  OF  THE  GODS 

life  in  the  soil,  how  the  organic  has  wedded  and 
blended  with  the  inorganic  in  the  ground  we  walk 
upon.  Many  if  not  all  of  the  sedimentary  rocks 
that  were  laid  down  in  the  abysms  of  the  old  ocean, 
out  of  which  our  soil  has  been  produced,  and  that 
are  being  laid  down  now,  out  of  which  future  soils 
will  be  produced,  were  and  are  largely  of  organic 
origin,  the  leavings  of  untold  myriads  of  minute 
marine  animals  that  lived  millions  of  years  ago. 
Our  limestone  rocks,  thousands  of  feet  thick  in 
places,  the  decomposition  of  which  furnishes  some 
of  our  most  fertile  soils,  are  mainly  of  plant  and 
animal  origin.  The  chalk  hills  of  England,  so 
smooth  and  plump,  so  domestic  and  mutton-sug- 
gesting, as  Huxley  says,  are  the  leavings  of  minute 
creatures  called  Olobigerinae,  that  lived  and  died  in 
the  ancient  seas  in  the  remote  past.  Other  similar 
creatures,  Radiolaria  and  diatoms,  have  played  an 
equally  important  part  in  contributing  the  founda- 
tion of  our  soils.  Diatom  earth  is  found  in  places 
in  Virginia  forty  feet  thick.  The  coral  insects  have 
also  contributed  their  share  to  the  soil-making  rocks. 
Our  marl-beds,  our  phosphatic  and  carbonaceous 
rocks,  are  all  largely  of  animal  origin.  So  that  much 
of  our  soil  has  lived  and  died  many  times,  and  has 
been  charged  more  and  more  during  the  geologic 
ages  or  eternities  with  the  potencies  of  life. 

Indeed,  Huxley,  after  examining  the  discoveries 
of  the  Challenger  expedition,  says  there  are  good 
207 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

grounds  for  the  belief  "that  all  the  chief  known 
constituents  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  may  have 
formed  part  of  living  bodies ;  that  they  may  be  the 
'ash'  of  protoplasm." 

This  implies  that  life  first  appeared  in  the  sea,  and 
gave  rise  to  untold  myriads  of  minute  organisms, 
that  built  themselves  shells  out  of  the  mineral  matter 
held  in  solution  by  the  water.  As  these  organisms 
perished,  their  shells  fell  to  the  bottom  and  formed 
the  sedimentary  rocks.  In  the  course  of  ages  these 
rocks  were  lifted  up  above  the  sea,  and  their  decay 
and  disintegration  under  the  action  of  the  elements 
formed  our  soil  —  our  clays,  our  marls,  our  green 
sand  —  and  out  of  this  soil  man  himself  is  built  up. 

I  do  not  wonder  that  the  Creator  found  the 
dust  of  the  earth  the  right  stuff  to  make  Adam  of. 
It  was  half  man  already.  I  can  easily  believe  that 
his  spirit  was  evoked  from  the  same  stuff,  that 
it  was  latent  there,  and  in  due  time,  under  the 
brooding  warmth  of  the  creative  energy,  awoke  to 
life. 

If  matter  is  eternal,  as  science  leads  us  to  believe, 
and  creation  and  recreation  a  never-ending  process, 
then  the  present  world,  with  all  its  myriad  forms 
of  the  organic  and  the  inorganic,  is  only  one  of  the 
infinite  number  of  forms  that  matter  must  have 
assumed  in  past  aeons.  The  whole  substance  of 
the  globe  must  have  gone  to  the  making  of  other 
globes  such  a  number  of  times  as  no  array  of  fig- 
208 


THE   GRIST  OF  THE   GODS 

ures  could  express.  Every  one  of  the  sixty  or  more 
primary  elements  that  make  up  our  own  bodies 
and  the  solid  earth  beneath  us  must  have  played 
the  same  part  in  the  drama  of  life  and  death, 
growth  and  decay,  organic  and  inorganic,  that  it 
is  playing  now,  and  will  continue  to  play  through 
an  unending  future. 

This  gross  matter  seems  ever  ready  to  vanish  into 
the  transcendental.  When  the  new  physics  is  done 
with  it,  what  is  there  left  but  spirit,  or  something 
akin  to  it  ?  When  the  physicist  has  followed  matter 
through  all  its  transformations,  its  final  disguise 
seems  to  be  electricity.  The  solid  earth  is  resolvable 
into  electricity,  which  comes  as  near  to  spirit  as 
anything  we  can  find  in  the  universe. 

Our  senses  are  too  dull  and  coarse  to  apprehend 
the  subtle  and  incessant  play  of  forces  about  us  — 
the  finer  play  and  emanations  of  matter  that  go  on 
all  about  us  and  through  us.  From  a  lighted  candle, 
or  gas-jet,  or  glowing  metal  shoot  corpuscles  or 
electrons,  the  basic  constituents  of  matter,  of  incon- 
ceivable smallness  — a  thousand  times  smaller  than 
an  atom  of  hydrogen  —  and  at  the  inconceivable 
speed  of  10,000  to  90,000  miles  a  second.  Think 
how  we  are  bombarded  by  these  bullets  as  we  sit 
around  the  lamp  or  under  the  gas-jet  at  night,  and 
are  all  unconscious  of  them !  We  are  immersed  in  a 
sea  of  forces  and  potentialities  of  which  we  hardly 
dream.  Of  the  scale  of  temperatures,  from  absolute 
209 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

zero  to  the  heat  of  the  sun,  human  life  knows  only 
a  minute  fraction.  So  of  the  elemental  play  of  forces 
about  us  and  over  us,  terrestrial  and  celestial  — too 
fine  for  our  apprehension  on  the  one  hand,  and  too 
large  on  the  other — we  know  but  a  fraction. 

The  quivering  and  the  throbbing  of  the  earth 
under  our  feet  in  changes  of  temperature,  the  bend- 
ings  and  oscillations  of  the  crust  under  the  tread 
of  the  great  atmospheric  waves,  the  vital  fermenta- 
tions and  oxidations  in  the  soil  —  are  all  beyond 
the  reach  of  our  dull  senses.  We  hear  the  wind  in 
the  treetops,  but  we  do  not  hear  the  humming  of  the 
sap  in  the  trees.  We  feel  the  pull  of  gravity,  but 
we  do  not  feel  the  medium  through  which  it  works. 
During  the  solar  storms  and  disturbances  all  our 
magnetic  and  electrical  instruments  are  agitated, 
but  you  and  I  are  all  unconscious  of  the  agitation. 

There  are  no  doubt  vibrations  from  out  the 
depths  of  space  that  might  reach  our  ears  as  sound 
were  they  attuned  to  the  ether  as  the  eye  is  when 
it  receives  a  ray  of  light.  We  might  hear  the  rush 
of  the  planets  along  their  orbits,  we  might  hear  the 
explosions  and  uprushes  in  the  sun ;  we  might  hear 
the  wild  whirl  and  dance  of  the  nebulae,  where  suns 
and  systems  are  being  formed ;  we  might  hear  the 
"wreck  of  matter  and  the  crush  of  worlds"  that 
evidently  takes  place  now  and  then  in  the  abysms 
of  space,  because  all  these  things  must  send  through 
the  ether  impulses  and  tremblings  that  reach  our 
210 


THE   GRIST   OF  THE   GODS 

planet.  But  if  we  felt  or  heard  or  saw  or  were  con- 
scious of  all  that  was  going  on  in  the  universe,  what 
a  state  of  agitation  we  should  be  in !  Our  scale  of 
apprehension  is  wisely  limited,  mainly  to  things 
that  concern  our  well-being. 

But  let  not  care  and  humdrum  deaden  us  to  the 
wonders  and  the  mysteries  amid  which  we  live, 
nor  to  the  splendors  and  the  glories.  We  need  not 
translate  ourselves  in  imagination  to  some  other 
sphere  or  state  of  being  to  find  the  marvelous,  the 
divine,  the  transcendent ;  we  need  not  postpone  our 
day  of  wonder  and  appreciation  to  some  future 
time  and  condition.  The  true  inwardness  of  this 
gross  visible  world,  hanging  like  an  apple  on  the 
bough  of  the  great  cosmic  tree,  and  swelling  with 
all  the  juices  and  potencies  of  life,  transcends  any- 
thing we  have  dreamed  of  super-terrestrial  abodes. 
It  is  because  of  these  things,  because  of  the  vitality, 
spirituality,  oneness,  and  immanence  of  the  universe 
as  revealed  by  science,  its  condition  of  transcending 
time  and  space,  without  youth  and  without  age, 
neither  beginning  nor  ending,  neither  material  nor 
spiritual,  but  forever  passing  from  one  into  the 
other,  that  I  was  early  and  deeply  impressed  by 
Walt  Whitman's  lines  :  — 

"There  was  never  any  more  inception  than  there  is  now, 
Nor  any  more  youth  or  age  than  there  is  now; 
And  will  never  be  any  more  perfection  than  there  is  now, 
Nor  any  more  heaven  or  hell  than  there  is  now." 

211 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

And  I  may  add,  nor  any  more  creation  than  there 
is  now,  nor  any  more  miracles,  or  glories,  or  won- 
ders, or  immortality,  or  judgment  days,  than  there 
are  now.  And  we  shall  never  be  nearer  God  and 
spiritual  and  transcendent  things  than  we  are  now. 
The  babe  in  its  mother's  womb  is  not  nearer  its 
mother  than  we  are  to  the  invisible  sustaining  and 
mothering  powers  of  the  universe,  and  to  its  spirit- 
ual entities,  every  moment  of  our  lives. 

The  doors  and  windows  of  the  universe  are  all 
open;  the  screens  are  all  transparent.  We  are  not 
barred  or  shut  off;  there  is  nothing  foreign  or 
unlike;  we  find  our  own  in  the  stars  as  in  the 
ground  underfoot;  this  clod  may  become  a  man; 
yon  shooting  star  may  help  redden  his  blood. 

Whatever  is  upon  the  earth  is  of  the  earth;  it 
came  out  of  the  divine  soil,  beamed  upon  by  the 
fructifying  heavens,  the  soul  of  man  not  less  than 
his  body. 

I  never  see  the  spring  flowers  rising  from  the 
mould,  or  the  pond-lilies  born  of  the  black  ooze, 
that  matter  does  not  become  transparent  and  reveal 
to  me  the  working  of  the  same  celestial  powers 
that  fashioned  the  first  man  from  the  common 
dust. 

Man's  mind  is  no  more  a  stranger  to  the  earth 
than  is  his  body.  Is  not  the  clod  wise  ?  Is  not  the 
chemistry  underfoot  intelligent  ?  Do  not  the  roots 
of  the  trees  find  their  way  ?  Do  not  the  birds  know 


THE   GRIST  OF  THE  GODS 

their  times  and  seasons  ?  Are  not  all  things  about 
us  filled  to  overflowing  with  mind-stuff?  The  cos- 
mic mind  is  the  earth  mind,  and  the  earth  mind  is 
man's  mind,  freed  but  narrowed,  with  vision  but 
with  erring  reason,  conscious  but  troubled,  and  — 
shall  we  say  ?  —  human  but  immortal. 


XI 
THE    DIVINE    SOIL 

i 

HOW  few  persons  can  be  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  that  which  is  repugnant  to  their  feelings ! 
When  Darwin  published  his  conclusion  that  man  was 
descended  from  an  apelike  ancestor  who  was  again 
descended  from  a  still  lower  type,  most  people  were 
shocked  by  the  thought ;  it  was  intensely  repugnant 
to  their  feelings.  Carlyle,  for  instance,  treated  the 
proposition  with  contempt.  He  called  it  the  "gos- 
pel of  dirt."  "A  good  sort  of  man,"  he  said,  "is 
this  Darwin,  and  well  meaning,  but  with  very  little 
intellect."  Huxley  tells  of  seeing  the  old  man  one 
day  upon  the  street,  and  of  crossing  over  to  greet 
him.  Carlyle  looked  up  and  said,  "You're  Huxley, 
are  n't  you  ?  the  man  who  says  we  are  all  descended 
from  monkeys,"  and  went  on  his  way.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  know  just  what  Carlyle  thought  we 
were  descended  from.  Could  he,  or  did  he,  doubt 
at  all  that  if  he  were  to  go  back  a  few  thousand 
years  over  his  own  line  of  descent,  he  would  come 
upon  rude  savage  men,  who  used  stone  implements, 
and  lived  in  caves  or  rude  huts,  who  had  neither 
letters  nor  arts,  and  with  whom  might  did  indeed 
make  right,  and  that  back  of  these  he  would  find 
215 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

still  more  primitive  races,  and  that  these  too  had 
their  still  more  savage  and  bestial  forbears  ?  When 
started  on  the  back  track  of  his  own  race,  where 
could  he  stop?  Could  he  stop  anywhere?  The 
neolithic  man  stands  on  the  shoulders  of  the  pa- 
leolithic, and  he  on  a  still  lower  human  or  semi- 
human  form,  till  we  come  to  a  manlike  ape  or  an 
apelike  man,  living  in  trees  and  subsisting  on  roots 
and  nuts  and  wild  fruits.  Every  child  born  to-day, 
by  the  grip  of  its  hands,  the  strength  of  its  arms, 
and  the  weakness  of  its  legs,  hints  of  those  far-off 
arboreal  ancestors.  Carlyle  must  also  have  known 
that  in  his  fetal  or  prenatal  life  there  was  a  time 
when  his  embryo  could  not  have  been  distinguished 
from  that  of  a  dog,  to  say  nothing  of  a  monkey. 
Was  this  fact  also  intolerable  to  him  ? 

It  must  be  a  bitter  pill  to  persons  of  Carlyle's 
temperament  to  have  to  accept  the  account  of  their 
own  human  origin;  that  the  stork  legend  of  the 
baby  is,  after  all,  not  good  natural  history.  The 
humble  beginning  of  each  of  us  is  not  one  that 
appeals  to  the  imagination,  nor  to  the  religious 
sentiment,  nor  to  our  love  of  the  mysterious  and 
the  remote,  yet  the  evidence  in  favor  of  its  truth 
is  pretty  strong. 

In  fact,  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the  origin  of  man 

differs  from  the  popular  one  just  as  the  natural 

history  of  babies  as  we  all  know  it  differs  from  the 

account  in  the  nursery  legends,  and  gives  about 

216 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

the  same  shock  to  our  sensibilities  and  our  pride 
of  origin. 

One  of  the  hardest  lessons  we  have  to  learn  in 
this  life,  and  one  that  many  persons  never  learn, 
is  to  see  the  divine,  the  celestial,  the  pure,  in  the 
common,  the  near  at  hand  — to  see  that  heaven 
lies  about  us  here  in  this  world.  Carlyle's  gospel 
of  dirt,  when  examined  closely,  differs  in  no  respect 
from  a  gospel  of  star  dust.  Why,  we  have  invented 
the  whole  machinery  of  the  supernatural,  with  its 
unseen  spirits  and  powers  good  and  bad,  to  account 
for  things,  because  we  found  the  universal  every- 
day nature  too  cheap,  too  common,  too  vulgar.  We 
have  had  to  cap  the  natural  with  the  supernatural 
to  satisfy  our  love  for  the  marvelous  and  the  inex- 
plicable. As  soon  as  a  thing  is  brought  within  our 
ken  and  the  region  of  our  experience,  it  seems  to 
lose  caste  and  be  cheapened.  I  am  at  a  loss  how  to 
account  for  this  mythopoetic  tendency  of  ours,  but 
what  a  part  it  has  played  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
and  what  a  part  it  still  plays  —  turning  the  light 
of  day  into  a  mysterious  illusive  and  haunted  twi- 
light on  every  hand!  It  would  seem  as  if  it  must 
have  served  some  good  purpose  in  the  development 
of  the  race,  but  just  what  is  not  so  easy  to  point  out 
as  the  evil  it  has  wrought,  the  mistakes  and  self- 
delusions  it  has  given  rise  to.  One  may  probably 
say  that  in  its  healthy  and  legitimate  action  it  has 
given  rise  to  poetry  and  to  art  and  to  the  many 
217 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

escapes  which  the  imagination  provides  us  from 
the  hard  and  wearing  realities  of  life.  Its  implacable 
foe  is  undoubtedly  the  scientific  spirit  — the  spirit 
of  the  now  and  the  here,  that  seeks  proof  and  finds 
the  marvelous  and  the  divine  in  the  ground  under- 
foot ;  the  spirit  that  animated  Lyell  and  opened  his 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  forces  and  agencies  at  work 
every  day  around  us  were  adequate  to  account  for 
the  tremendous  changes  in  the  earth's  surface  in  the 
past ;  that  animated  Darwin  and  led  him  to  trace 
the  footsteps  of  the  creative  energy  in  the  natural 
life  of  plants  and  animals  to-day;  that  animated 
Huxley  and  filled  him  with  such  righteous  wrath  at 
the  credulity  of  his  theological  brethren;  and  that 
animates  every  one  of  us  when  we  clinch  a  nail, 
or  stop  a  leak,  or  turn  a  thing  over  and  look  on  the 
other  side,  and  apply  to  practical  affairs  the  touch- 
stone of  common  sense. 

That  man  is  of  divine  origin  in  a  sense  that  no 
other  animal  is,  is  a  conviction  dear  to  the  com- 
mon mind.  It  was  dear  to  the  mind  of  Carlyle,  it 
chimed  in  well  with  his  distrust  of  the  present,  his 
veneration  of  the  past,  and  his  Hebraic  awe  and 
reverential  fear  before  the  mysteries  of  the  universe. 
While  Darwin's  attitude  of  mind  toward  outward 
things  was  one  of  inquiry  and  thirst  for  exact  know- 
ledge, Carlyle's  was  one  of  reverence  and  wonder. 
He  was  more  inclined  to  worship  where  Darwin 
was  moved  to  investigate.  Darwin,  too,  felt  the 
218 


THE   DIVINE  SOIL 

presence  of  the  great  unknown,  but  he  sought  solace 
in  the  knowable  of  the  physical  world  about  him, 
while  Carlyle  sought  solace  in  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual world,  where  his  great  mythopoetic  faculty 
could  have  free  swing. 

We  teach  and  we  preach  that  God  is  in  every- 
thing from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  and  that  all 
things  are  possible  with  him,  and  yet  practically 
we  deny  that  he  is  in  the  brute,  and  that  it  is  pos- 
sible man  should  have  had  his  origin  there. 

I  long  ago  convinced  myself  that  whatever  is  on 
the  earth  and  shares  its  life  is  of  the  earth,  and,  in 
some  way  not  open  to  me,  came  out  of  the  earth, 
the  highest  not  less  than  the  humblest  creature  at 
our  feet.  I  like  to  think  of  the  old  weather-worn 
globe  as  the  mother  of  us  all.  I  like  to  think  of 
the  ground  underfoot  as  plastic  and  responsive  to 
the  creative  energy,  vitally  related  to  the  great  cos- 
mic forces,  a  red  corpuscle  in  the  life  current  of 
the  Eternal,  and  that  man,  with  all  his  high-fly- 
ing dreams  and  aspirations,  his  arts,  his  bibles,  his 
religions,  his  literatures,  his  philosophies  —  heroes, 
saints,  martyrs,  sages,  poets,  prophets  —  all  lay 
folded  there  in  the  fiery  mist  out  of  which  the  planet 
came.  I  love  to  make  Whitman's  great  lines  my 
own:  — 

"I  am  an  acme  of  things  accomplished,  and  I  an  endorser  of 

things  to  be. 

My  feet  strike  an  apex  of  the  apices  of  the  stairs, 
219 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

On  every  step  bunches  of  ages,  and  larger  bunches  between 

the  steps, 
All  below  duly  traveled,  and  still  I  mount  and  mount. 

"  Rise  after  rise  bow  the  phantoms  behind  me, 

Afar  down  I  see  the  huge  first  Nothing  —  I  know  I  was  even 

there, 
I  waited  unseen  and  always,  and  slept  through  the  lethargic 

mist, 
And  took  my  time,  and  took  no  hurt  from  the  fetid  carbon. 

"  Long  I  was  hugged  close  —  long  and  long. 
Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me, 
Faithful  and  friendly  the  arms  that  have  helped  me. 
Cycles  ferried  my  cradle,  rowing  and  rowing  like  cheerful  boat- 
men, 

For  room  to  me  stars  kept  aside  in  their  own  rings, 
They  sent  influences  to  look  after  what  was  to  hold  me. 

"  Before  I  was  born  out  of  my  mother  generations  guided  me, 

My  embryo  has  never  been  torpid  —  nothing  could  overlay  it. 

For  it  the  nebula  cohered  to  an  orb, 

The  long,  slow  strata  piled  to  rest  it  in, 

Vast  vegetables  gave  it  sustenance, 

Monstrous  sauroids  transported  it  in  their  mouths  and  depos- 
ited it  with  care. 

All  forces  have  been  steadily  employed  to  complete  and  delight 
me, 

Now  I  stand  on  this  spot  with  my  Soul." 

II 

The  material,  the  carnal,  the  earthy,  has  been  so 

long  under  the  ban,  so  long  associated  in  our  minds 

with  that  which  hinders  and  degrades,  and  as  the 

source  and  province  of  evil,  that  it  will  take  sci- 

220 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

ence  a  long  time  to  redeem  it  and  lift  it  again  to  its 
proper  place. 

It  jars  upon  our  sensibilities  and  disturbs  our 
preconceived  notions  to  be  told  that  the  spiritual 
has  its  root  in  the  carnal,  and  is  as  truly  its  product 
as  the  flower  is  the  product  of  the  roots  and  the 
stalk  of  the  plant.  The  conception  does  not  cheapen 
or  degrade  the  spiritual,  it  elevates  the  carnal,  the 
material.  To  regard  the  soul  and  body  as  one,  or 
to  ascribe  to  consciousness  a  physiological  origin, 
is  not  detracting  from  its  divinity,  it  is  rather  con- 
ferring divinity  upon  the  body.  One  thing  is  inev- 
itably linked  with  another  —  the  higher  forms  with 
the  lower  forms,  the  butterfly  with  the  grub,  the 
flower  with  the  root,  the  food  we  eat  with  the  thought 
we  think,  the  poem  we  write,  or  the  picture  we  paint, 
with  the  processes  of  digestion  and  nutrition.  How 
science  has  enlarged  and  ennobled  and  purified 
our  conception  of  the  universe ;  how  it  has  cleaned 
out  the  evil  spirits  that  have  so  long  terrified  man- 
kind, and  justified  the  verdict  of  the  Creator:  "and 
behold  it  was  good  "!  With  its  indestructibility  of 
matter,  its  conservation  of  energy,  its  inviolability 
of  cause  and  effect,  its  unity  of  force  and  elements 
throughout  sidereal  space,  it  has  prepared  the  way 
for  a  conception  of  man,  his  origin,  his  develop- 
ment, and  in  a  measure  his  destiny,  that  at  last 
makes  him  at  home  in  the  universe. 

How  much  more  consistent  it  is  with  what  we 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

know  of  the  unity  of  nature  to  believe  that  one  spe- 
cies should  have  come  through  another,  that  man 
should  have  come  through  the  brute  rather  than 
have  been  grafted  upon  him  from  without.  Unfold- 
ing and  ever  unfolding,  upward  and  onward,  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher,  from  the  simple  to  the 
complex  —  that  has  been  the  course  of  organic 
evolution  from  the  first. 

One  thinks  of  the  creative  energy  as  working 
along  many  lines,  only  one  of  which  eventuated 
in  man ;  all  the  others  fell  short,  or  terminated  in 
lower  forms.  Hence  while  we  think  of  man  as 
capable  of,  and  destined  to,  still  higher  develop- 
ment, we  look  upon  the  lower  orders  as  having 
reached  the  end  of  their  course,  and  conclude  there 
is  no  to-morrow  for  them. 

The  anthropoid  apes  seem  indeed  like  prelimi- 
nary studies  of  man,  or  rejected  models  of  the  great 
inventor  who  was  blindly  groping  his  way  to  the 
higher  form.  The  ape  is  probably  our  ancestor 
in  no  other  sense  than  this.  Nature  seems  to  have 
had  man  in  mind  when  she  made  him,  but  evi- 
dently she  lost  interest  in  him,  humanly  speaking, 
and  tried  some  other  combination.  The  ape  must 
always  remain  an  ape.  Some  collateral  branch 
doubtless  gave  birth  to  a  higher  form,  and  this  to 
a  still  higher,  till  we  reach  our  preglacial  forbears. 
Then  some  one  branch  or  branches  distanced  all 
others,  leaving  rude  tribes  by  the  way  in  whom 
222 


THE   DIVINE   SOIL 

development  seemed  arrested,  till  we  reach  the 
dawn  of  history. 

The  creative  energy  seems  ever  to  have  been 
pushing  out  and  on,  and  yet  ever  leaving  a  residue 
of  forms  behind.  The  reptiles  did  not  all  become 
birds,  nor  the  invertebrates  all  become  vertebrates, 
nor  the  apes  all  become  men,  nor  the  men  all 
become  Europeans.  Every  higher  form  has  a 
base  or  background  of  kindred  lower  forms  out 
of  which  it  seems  to  have  emerged,  and  to  which 
it  now  and  then  shows  a  tendency  to  revert.  And 
this  is  the  order  of  nature  everywhere,  in  our  own 
physiology  and  psychology  not  less  than  in  the 
evolution  of  the  forms  of  life.  Do  not  our  highest 
ideals  have  their  rise  and  foundation  in  sensation 
and  experience  ?  There  is  no  higher  without  first 
the  lower,  and  the  lower  does  not  all  become  the 
higher. 

The  blood  relationship  between  man  and  the 
anthropoid  apes,  as  shown  in  the  fact  that  human 
blood  acts  poisonously  upon  and  decomposes  the 
blood  of  the  lower  apes  and  other  mammals,  but  is 
harmless  to  the  blood  of  the  anthropoid  apes  and 
affiliates  with  it,  is  very  significant.  It  convinces 
like  a  demonstration.  Transfer  the  blood  of  the 
dog  to  the  fox  or  the  wolf,  or  vice  versa,  and  all  goes 
well ;  they  are  brothers.  Transfer  the  blood  of  the 
dog  to  the  rabbit,  or  vice  versa,  and  a  struggle  for 
life  immediately  takes  place.  The  serum  of  one 
223 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

blood  destroys  the  cells  of  the  other.  This  fact 
confirms  Huxley's  statement  that  the  anatomical 
difference  between  man  and  the  anthropoid  apes 
is  less  than  the  corresponding  difference  between 
the  latter  and  the  lower  apes. 

in 

One  thing  we  may  affirm  about  the  universe  — 
it  is  logical ;  the  conclusion  always  follows  from  the 
premises. 

The  lesson  which  life  repeats  and  constantly 
enforces  is  "look  under  foot."  You  are  always 
nearer  the  divine  and  the  true  sources  of  your 
power  than  you  think.  The  lure  of  the  distant  and 
the  difficult  is  deceptive.  The  great  opportunity  is 
where  you  are.  Do  not  despise  your  own  place  and 
hour.  Every  place  is  under  the  stars,  every  place  is 
the  centre  of  the  world.  Stand  in  your  own  door- 
yard  and  you  have  eight  thousand  miles  of  solid 
ground  beneath  you,  and  all  the  sidereal  splendors 
overhead.  The  morning  and  the  evening  stars  are 
no  more  in  the  heavens  and  no  more  obedient  to 
the  celestial  impulses  than  the  lonely  and  time- 
scarred  world  we  inhabit.  How  the  planet  thrills 
and  responds  to  the  heavenly  forces  and  occurrences 
we  little  know,  but  we  get  an  inkling  of  it  when  we 
see  the  magnetic  needle  instantly  affected  by  solar 
disturbances. 

Look  under  foot.  Gold  and  diamonds  and  all 
224 


—J 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 


precious  stones  come  out  of  the  ground ;  they  do 
not  drop  upon  us  from  the  stars,  and  our  highest 
thoughts  are  in  some  way  a  transformation  or  a 
transmutation  of  the  food  we  eat.  The  mean  is  the 
divine  if  we  make  it  so.  The  child  surely  learns 
that  its  father  and  mother  are  the  Santa  Claus  that 
brought  the  gifts,  though  the  discovery  may  bring 
pain;  and  the  man  learns  to  see  providence  in  the 
great  universal  forces  of  nature,  in  the  winds  and 
the  rain,  in  the  soil  underfoot  and  in  the  cloud  over- 
head. What  these  forces  in  their  orderly  rounds 
do  not  bring  him,  he  does  not  expect.  The  farmer 
hangs  up  his  stocking  in  the  way  of  empty  bins  and 
barns,  and  he  knows  well  who  or  what  must  fill 
them.  The  Santa  Claus  of  the  merchant,  the  manu- 
facturer, the  inventor,  is  the  forces  and  conditions  all 
about  us  in  every-day  operation.  When  the  light- 
ning strikes  your  building  or  the  trees  on  your  lawn, 
you  are  at  least  reminded  that  you  do  not  live  in 
a  corner  outside  of  Jove's  dominions,  you  are  in 
the  circuit  of  the  great  forces.  If  you  are  eligible 
to  bad  fortune  where  you  stand,  you  are  equally 
eligible  to  good  fortune  there.  The  young  man 
who  went  West  did  well,  but  the  young  man  who  had 
the  Western  spirit  and  stayed  at  home  did  equally 
well.  To  evoke  a  spark  of  fire  out  of  a  flint  with  a 
bit  of  steel  is  the  same  thing  as  evoking  beautiful 
thoughts  from  homely  facts.  How  hard  it  is  for  us 
to  see  the  heroic  in  an  act  of  our  neighbor! 
225 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

IV 

What  a  burden  science  took  upon  itself  when  it 
sought  to  explain  the  origin  of  man!  Religion  or 
theology  takes  a  short  cut  and  makes  quick  work 
of  it  by  regarding  man  as  the  result  of  the  special 
creative  act  of  a  supernatural  Being.  But  science 
takes  a  long  and  tedious  and  hazardous  way 
around  through  the  lowest  primordial  forms  of  life. 
It  seeks  to  trace  his  germ  through  the  abyss  of 
geologic  time,  where  all  is  dim  and  mysterious, 
through  countless  cycles  of  waiting  and  prepara- 
tion, where  the  slow,  patient  gods  of  evolution 
cherished  it  and  passed  it  on,  through  the  fetid 
carbon,  through  the  birth  and  decay  of  continents, 
through  countless  interchanges  and  readjustments 
of  sea  and  land,  through  the  clash  and  warring  of 
the  cosmic  forces,  through  good  and  evil  report, 
through  the  fish  and  the  reptile,  through  the  ape 
and  the  orang,  up  to  man  —  from  the  slime  at  the 
bottom  of  the  primordial  ocean  up  to  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth. Surely  one  may  say  with  Whitman,  — 

"Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me, 
Faithful  and  friendly  the  arms  that  have  helped  me." 

It  took  about  one  hundred  thousand  feet  of  sed- 
imentary rock,  laid  down  through  hundreds  of 
millions  of  years  in  the  bottom  of  the  old  seas,  all 
probably  the  leavings  of  minute  forms  of  life,  to 
make  a  foundation  upon  which  man  could  appear. 
226 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

His  origin  as  revealed  by  science  fills  and  appalls 
the  imagination:  as  revealed  by  theology  it  simply 
baffles  and  dumfounds  one.  Science  deepens  the 
mystery  while  yet  it  gives  the  reason  and  the  imagi- 
nation something  to  go  upon;  it  takes  us  beyond 
soundings,  but  not  beyond  the  assurance  that  cause 
and  effect  are  still  continuous  there  beneath  us.  I 
like  to  think  that  man  has  traveled  that  long,  ad- 
venturous road,  that  the  whole  creation  has  pulled 
together  to  produce  him.  It  is  a  road,  of  course, 
beset  with  pain  and  anguish,  beset  with  ugly  and 
repellent  forms,  beset  with  riot  and  slaughter;  it 
leads  through  jungle  and  morass,  through  floods 
and  cataclysms,  through  the  hells  of  the  Meso- 
zoic  and  the  Cenozoic  periods,  but  it  leads  ever 
upward  and  onward. 

The  manward  impulse  in  creation  has  doubtless 
been  checked  many  times,  but  never  lost ;  all  forms 
conspired  to  further  it,  and  it  seemed  to  have  taken 
the  push  and  the  aspiration  out  of  each  order  as 
it  passed  on,  dooming  it  henceforth  to  a  round  of 
life  without  change  or  hope  of  progress,  leaving 
the  fish  to  continue  fish,  the  reptiles  to  continue 
reptiles,  the  apes  to  continue  apes ;  it  took  all  the 
heart  and  soul  of  each  to  feed  and  continue  the 
central  impulse  that  was  to  eventuate  in  man. 

I  fail  to  see  why  our  religious  brethren  cannot  find 
in  this  history  or  revelation  as  much  room  for  crea- 
tive energy,  as  large  a  factor  of  the  mysterious  and 
227 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

superhuman,  as  in  the  myth  of  Genesis.  True  it  is 
that  it  fixes  our  attention  upon  this  world  and  upon 
forces  with  which  we  are  more  or  less  familiar,  but 
it  implies  an  element  or  a  power  before  which  we 
stand  helpless  and  dumb.  What  fathered  this  man- 
impulse,  what  launched  this  evolutionary  process, 
what  or  who  stamped  upon  the  first  protoplasm 
the  aspiration  to  be  man,  and  never  let  that  aspira- 
tion sleep  through  all  the  tremendous  changes  of 
those  incalculable  geologic  ages  ?  What  or  who  first 
planted  the  seed  of  the  great  biological  tree,  and 
determined  all  its  branchings  and  the  fruit  it  should 
bear?  If  you  must  have  a  God,  either  apart  from 
or  imminent  in  creation,  it  seems  to  me  that  there 
is  as  much  need  of  one  here  as  in  the  Mosaic  cos- 
mology. The  final  mystery  cannot  be  cleared  up. 
We  can  only  drive  it  to  cover.  How  the  universe 
came  to  be  what  it  is,  and  how  man  came  to  be 
man,  who  can  tell  us? 

That  somewhere  in  my  line  of  descent  was  an 
ancestor  that  lived  in  trees  and  had  powerful  arms 
and  weaker  legs,  that  his  line  began  in  a  creature 
that  lived  on  the  ground,  and  his  in  one  that  lived 
in  the  mud,  or  in  the  sea,  and  his,  or  its,  sprang 
from  a  germ  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  but  deepens 
the  mystery  of  the  being  that  is  now  here  and  can 
look  back  and  speculate  over  the  course  he  has 
probably  come;  it  only  directs  attention  to  ugly 
facts,  to  material  things,  to  the  every-day  process 
228 


THE  DIVINE   SOIL 

of  evolution,  instead  of  to  the  far  away,  the  un- 
known, or  the  supernatural. 

How  the  organic  came  to  bud  and  grow  from  the 
inorganic,  who  knows  ?  Yet  it  must  have  done  so. 
We  seem  compelled  to  think  of  an  ascending  series 
from  nebular  matter  up  to  the  spirituality  of  man, 
each  stage  in  the  series  resting  upon  or  growing 
out  of  the  one  beneath  it.  Creation  or  develop- 
ment must  be  continuous.  There  are  and  can  be 
no  breaks.  The  inorganic  is  already  endowed  with 
chemical  and  molecular  life.  The  whole  universe 
is  alive,  and  vibrates  with  impulses  too  fine  for 
our  dull  senses;  but  in  chemical  affinity,  in  crys- 
tallization, in  the  persistence  of  force,  in  electri- 
city, we  catch  glimpses  of  a  kind  of  vitality  that 
is  preliminary  to  all  other.  I  never  see  fire  burn, 
or  water  flow,  or  the  frost-mark  on  the  pane, 
that  I  am  not  reminded  of  something  as  myste- 
rious as  life.  How  alive  the  flame  seems,  how 
alive  the  water,  how  marvelous  the  arborescent  etch- 
ings of  the  frost!  Is  there  a  principle  of  fire? 
Is  there  a  principle  of  crystallization?  Just  as 
much  as  there  is  a  principle  of  life.  The  mind, 
in  each  case,  seems  to  require  something  to  lay 
hold  of  as  a  cause.  Why  these  wonderful  star 
forms  of  the  snowflake?  Why  these  exact  geo- 
metric forms  of  quartz  crystals  ?  The  gulf  between 
disorganized  matter  and  the  crystal  seems  to  me 
as  great  as  that  between  the  organic  and  the  inor- 
229 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

ganic.  If  we  did  not  every  day  witness  the  passage, 
we  could  not  believe  it.  The  gulf  between  the  crys- 
tal and  the  cell  we  have  not  seen  cleared,  and 
man  has  not  yet  been  able  to  bridge  it,  and  may 
never  be,  but  it  has  been  bridged,  and  I  dare  say 
without  any  more  miracle  than  hourly  goes  on 
around  us.  The  production  of  water  from  two 
invisible  gases  is  a  miracle  to  me.  When  water  ap- 
peared (what  made  it  appear?)  and  the  first  cloud 
floated  across  the  blue  sky,  life  was  not  far  off,  if 
it  was  not  already  there.  Some  morning  in  spring 
when  the  sun  shone  across  the  old  Azoic  hills,  at 
some  point  where  the  land  and  sea  met,  life  began 
—  the  first  speck  of  protoplasm  appeared.  Call  it 
the  result  of  the  throb  or  push  of  the  creative 
energy  that  pervades  all  things,  and  whose  action 
is  continuous  and  not  intermittent,  since  we  are 
compelled  to  presuppose  such  energy  to  account 
for  anything,  even  our  own  efforts  to  account  for 
things.  An  ever  active  vital  force  pervades  the 
universe,  and  is  felt  and  seen  in  all  things,  from 
atomic  attraction  and  repulsion  up  to  wheeling  suns 
and  systems.  The  very  processes  of  thought  seem 
to  require  such  premises  to  go  upon.  There  is  a 
reason  for  the  universe  as  we  find  it,  else  man's  rea- 
son is  a  delusion,  and  delusion  itself  is  a  meaning- 
less term.  The  uncaused  is  unthinkable;  thought 
can  find  neither  beginning  nor  ending  to  the  uni- 
verse because  it  cannot  find  the  primal  cause.  Can 
230 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

we  think  of  a  stick  with  only  one  end  ?  We  have 
to  if  we  compass  time  in  thought,  or  space,  either. 


Given  atomic  motion,  chemical  affinity  —  this 
hunger  or  love  of  the  elements  for  one  another  — 
crystallization,  electricity,  radium,  the  raining  upon 
us  of  solar  and  sidereal  influences,  the  youth  of  the 
earth,  and  the  whole  universe  vibrating  with  the  cos- 
mic creative  energy,  the  beginning  of  life,  the  step 
from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  is  not  so  hard  to 
conceive.  In  a  dead  universe  this  would  be  hard, 
but  we  have  a  universe  throbbing  with  cosmic  life 
and  passion  to  begin  with.  It  is  impossible  for  me 
to  think  of  anything  as  uncaused,  and  in  trying  to 
figure  to  myself  this  beginning  of  life  I  have  to 
postulate  this  universal  creative  energy  that  pervades 
the  worlds  as  animating  the  atoms  and  causing 
them  to  combine  so  as  to  produce  the  primordial 
protoplasm.  Then  when  the  first  cell  divides  and 
becomes  two,  I  have  to  think  of  an  inherent  some- 
thing that  prompts  the  act,  and  so  on  all  the  way  up. 

I  cannot  conceive  of  crystallization,  this  precise 
and  invariable  arrangement  of  certain  elements, 
nor  of  the  invariable  chemical  compounds,  without 
postulating  some  inner  force,  or  will,  or  tendency 
that  determines  them.  I  cannot  conceive  of  an 
atom  of  carbon,  or  oxygen,  or  hydrogen  as  doing 
anything  of  itself.  It  must  be  alive,  and  this  life 
231 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

and  purpose  pervades  the  universe.  This  inability 
on  my  part  may  be  only  the  limitation  of  thought. 
I  know  there  are  things  I  cannot  conceive  of  that  are 
yet  true.  I  cannot  conceive  how  the  sky  is  still  over- 
head at  the  South  Pole  as  at  the  North,  because 
one  position  to  my  senses  is  the  reverse  of  the 
other,  and  I  am  compelled  to  think  of  up  and 
down  as  the  same.  I  cannot  think  how  anything 
can  begin,  because  time,  like  matter,  is  infinitely 
divisible,  and  there  always  remains  a  mathemati- 
cal fragment  of  time  between  the  not  beginning  and 
the  beginning.  The  conditions  of  thought  are  such 
that  I  do  not  see  how  one  can  think  of  one's  self, 
that  is,  be  object  and  subject  at  the  same  instant 
of  time  — jump  down  one's  own  throat,  so  to  speak 
—  and  yet  we  seem  to  manage  to  do  it. 

VI 

If  life  can  finally  be  explained  in  terms  of  physics 
and  chemistry,  that  is,  if  the  beginning  of  life  upon 
the  globe  was  no  new  thing,  the  introduction  of  no 
new  principle,  but  only  the  result  of  a  vastly  more 
complex  and  intimate  play  and  interaction  of  the 
old  physico-chemical  forces  of  the  inorganic  world, 
then  the  gulf  that  is  supposed  to  separate  the  two 
worlds  of  living  and  non-living  matter  virtually  dis- 
appears :  the  two  worlds  meet  and  fuse.  We  shall 
probably  in  time  have  to  come  to  accept  this  view  - 
the  view  of  the  mechanico-chemical  theory  of  life. 
232 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

It  is  in  a  line  with  the  whole  revelation  of  science, 
so  far  —  the  getting  rid  of  the  miraculous,  the  un- 
knowable, the  transcendental,  and  the  enhancing 
of  the  potency  and  the  mystery  of  things  near  at 
hand  that  we  have  always  known  in  other  forms. 
It  is  at  first  an  unpalatable  truth,  like  the  discov- 
ery of  the  animal  origin  of  man,  or  that  conscious- 
ness and  all  our  fine  thoughts  and  aspirations  are 
the  result  of  molecular  action  in  the  brain ;  or  like 
the  experience  of  the  child  when  it  discovers  that 
its  father  or  mother  is  the  Santa  Glaus  that  filled 
its  stockings.  Science  is  constantly  bringing  us 
back  to  earth  and  to  the  ground  underfoot.  Our 
dream  of  something  far  off,  supernatural,  van- 
ishes. We  lose  the  God  of  a  far-off  heaven,  and  find 
a  God  in  the  common,  the  near,  always  present, 
always  active,  always  creating  the  world  anew. 
Science  thus  corrects  our  delusions  and  vague  super- 
stitions, and  brings  us  back  near  home  for  the  key 
we  had  sought  afar.  We  shall  probably  be  brought, 
sooner  or  later,  to  accept  another  unpalatable 
theory,  that  of  the  physical  origin  of  the  soul,  that 
it  is  not  of  celestial  birth  except  as  the  celestial 
and  terrestrial  are  one.  This  is  really  only  taking 
our  religious  teachers  at  their  word,  that  God  is 
here,  as  constant  and  as  active  in  the  commonest 
substance  we  know  as  in  the  highest  heaven.  Science 
finds  the  beginning  of  something  like  conscious 
intelligence  in  the  first  unicellular  life,  the  first  pro- 
233 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

tozoon.  When  two  or  more  cells  unite  to  form  a 
metazoon,  it  finds  a  higher  and  more  complex  form 
of  intelligence.  In  the  brain  of  man  it  finds  a  confra- 
ternity of  millions  of  simple  cells,  each  with  a  life  and 
intelligence  of  its  own,  but  when  united  and  coop- 
erating, the  intelligence  of  all  pooled,  as  it  were,  we 
have  the  mind  and  personality  of  man  as  the  result. 
This  fact  leaves  no  room  for  the  notion  that  the 
mind  or  soul  is  an  entity  apart  from  the  organ  which 
it  uses.  It  seems,  on  the  contrary,  in  some  myste- 
rious way  to  be  the  result  of  the  multicellular  life 
of  the  nervous  system.  Thus  we  do  not  banish  the 
mystery  of  the  soul,  we  only  bring  it  nearer  home. 
We  disprove  a  fable,  and  are  then  confounded  by 
the  fact  that  lurks  under  it.  And  this  proves  true  in 
all  attempts  at  ultimate  explanations  of  the  pheno- 
mena of  this  world. 

It  seems  as  if  we  saw  the  hint  of  prophecy  of  the 
vegetable  in  the  mineral  —  in  this  growth  of  crys- 
tals, in  these  arborescent  forms  of  the  frost  on  the 
pane  or  on  the  flagging-stones.  One  may  see  most 
wonderful  tree  and  fern  forms  upon  the  pavement, 
with  clean  open  spaces  between  them,  as  much  so 
as  in  a  wood,  an  endless  variety  of  them.  A  French 
chemist  has  lately  produced  by  inorganic  com- 
pounds the  growth  of  something  like  a  plant  with 
roots,  stem,  branches,  leaves,  buds  —  a  mineral 
plant,  as  if  the  type  of  the  plant  already  existed 
in  the  soil;  Yes,  the  inorganic  is  dreaming  of  the 
234 


THE   DIVINE  SOIL 

organic.  And  the  plant  in  its  cell  structure,  in  its 
circulation,  in  its  intelligence,  or  in  its  ingenious 
devices  to  get  on  in  the  world  is  dreaming  of  the 
animal,  and  the  animal  is  dreaming  of  the  spiritual, 
and  the  spirituality  of  man  touches  the  spirituality 
of  the  cosmos,  and  thus  the  circle  is  complete. 

VII 

So  far  as  science  can  find  out,  sentience  is  a  pro- 
perty of  matter  which  is  evolved  under  certain 
conditions,  and  though  science  itself  has  not  yet 
been  able  to  reproduce  these  conditions,  it  still 
believes  in  the  possibility.  If  life  was  not  poten- 
tial in  the  inorganic  world,  how  is  it  possible  to 
account  for  it  ?  It  is  not  a  graft,  it  is  more  like  a 
begetting.  Nature  does  not  work  by  prefixes  and 
suffixes,  but  by  unfolding  and  ever  unfolding,  or 
developing  out  of  latent  innate  powers  and  possi- 
bilities; —  an  inward  necessity  always  working, 
but  never  an  external  maker.  It  is  no  help  to  fancy 
that  life  may  have  been  brought  to  the  earth  by 
a  falling  meteorite  from  some  other  sphere.  How 
did  life  originate  upon  that  other  sphere  ?  It  must 
have  started  here  as  surely  as  fire  started  here.  We 
feign  that  Prometheus  stole  the  first  fire  from 
heaven,  but  it  sleeps  here  all  about  us,  and  can  be 
evoked  any  time  and  anywhere.  It  sleeps  in  all 
forms  of  force.  A  falling  avalanche  of  rocks  turns 
to  flame;  the  meteor  in  the  air  becomes  a  torch; 
235 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

the  thunderbolt  is  a  huge  spark.  So  life,  no  doubt, 
slept  in  the  inorganic,  and  was  started  by  the 
reverse  of  friction,  namely,  by  brooding. 

When  the  earth  becomes  lifeless  again,  as  it  surely 
must  in  time,  then  the  cycle  will  be  repeated,  a  col- 
lision will  develop  new  energy  and  new  worlds, 
and  out  of  this  newness  will  again  come  life. 

It  is  highly  probable  that  a  million  years  elapsed 
between  the  time  when  the  ancestor  of  man  began 
to  assume  the  human  form  and  the  dawn  of  history. 
Try  to  think  of  that  time  and  of  the  struggle  of 
this  creature  upward;  of  the  pain,  the  suffering, 
the  low  bestial  life,  the  warrings,  the  defeats,  the 
slow,  infinitely  slow  gains,  of  his  deadly  enemies  in 
other  animals,  of  the  repeated  changes  of  climate 
of  the  northern  hemisphere  from  subtropical  to 
subarctic  —  the  land  at  one  time  for  thousands  of 
years  buried  beneath  an  ice  sheet  a  mile  or  more 
thick,  followed  by  a  cycle  of  years  of  almost  trop- 
ical warmth  even  in  Greenland  —  and  all  of  this 
before  man  had  yet  got  off  of  "  all  fours,"  and  stood 
upright  and  began  to  make  rude  tools  and  rude 
shelters  from  the  storms.  The  Tertiary  period,  early 
in  which  the  first  rude  ancestor  of  man  seems  to 
have  appeared,  is  less  than  one  week  of  the  great 
geologic  year  of  the  earth's  history  —  a  week  of 
about  five  days.  These  days  the  geologists  have 
named  Eocene,  Oligocene,  Miocene,  Pliocene,  and 
Pleistocene,  each  one  of  these  days  covering,  no 
236 


THE  DJVINE  SOIL 

doubt,  a  million  years  or  more.  The  ancestor  of  man 
probably  took  on  something  like  the  human  form  on 
the  third,  or  Miocene,  day.  The  other  and  earlier 
fifty  or  more  weeks  of  the  great  geologic  year  gradu- 
ally saw  the  development  of  the  simpler  forms  of  life, 
till  we  reach  the  earliest  mammals  and  reptiles  in  the 
Permian,  about  the  forty-eighth  or  forty-ninth  week 
of  the  great  year.  The  laying  down  of  the  coal  mea- 
sures, Huxley  thinks,  must  have  taken  six  millions 
of  years.  Well,  the  Lord  allowed  himself  enough 
time.  Evidently  he  was  in  no  hurry  to  see  man  cut- 
ting his  fantastic  tricks  here  upon  the  surface  of  the 
planet.  A  hundred  million  years,  more  or  less,  what 
of  it  ?  Did  the  globe  have  to  ripen  all  those  cycles 
upon  cycles,  like  the  apple  upon  the  tree  ?  bask  in 
the  sidereal  currents,  work  and  ferment  in  the  sea 
of  the  hypothetical  ether  before  the  gross  matter 
could  evolve  the  higher  forms  of  life  ?  Probably 
every  unicellular  organism  that  lived  and  died  in 
the  old  seas  helped  prepare  the  way  for  man, 
contributed  something  to  the  fund  of  vital  energy 
of  the  globe  upon  which  man  was  finally  to  draw. 

How  life  has  had  to  adjust  itself  to  the  great 
cosmic  changes!  The  delays  must  have  been  in- 
calculable. The  periodic  refrigeration  of  the  north- 
ern hemisphere,  which  brought  on  the  ice  age 
several  times  during  each  one  of  the  Eocene  and 
Miocene  days,  must  have  delayed  the  development 
of  life  as  we  know  it,  enormously. 
237 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

VIII 

From  nebula  to  nebula  —  these  are  the  hours 
struck  by  the  clock  of  eternity :  from  the  dissipation 
of  the  solar  systems  into  nebular  gas  by  their  falling 
together  to  their  condensation  again  into  suns  and 
worlds  by  the  action  of  physical  laws  —  thousands 
of  millions  of  years  in  each  hour,  and  the  hours 
infinite  in  number.  This  is  a  hint  of  eternity.  How 
many  times,  then,  there  must  have  been  a  world 
like  this  evolved  in  the  course  of  this  running  down 
and  winding  up  of  the  great  clock,  with  beings  like 
these  we  now  behold !  how  many  such  worlds  and 
such  beings  there  must  now  be  in  the  universe,  and 
have  always  been !  Can  you  think  of  the  number  ? 
Not  till  you  can  think  of  infinity.  The  duration  of 
life  upon  the  globe,  to  say  nothing  of  man's  little 
span,  is  hardly  a  tick  of  this  clock  of  eternity,  and 
the  repetition  of  the  birth  and  dissipations  of  sys- 
tems is  well  symbolized  by  the  endless  striking  or 
ticking  of  a  clock. 

Then  sooner  or  later  comes  the  thought,  What 
is  it  all  for  ?  and  from  the  great  abysm  comes  back 
the  echo,  "  What  for  ?  "  Is  it  our  human  limitations, 
the  discipline  of  this  earthly  life,  when  we  have  to 
count  the  cost  and  ask  what  it  is  for,  that  makes 
us  put  the  question  to  the  Infinite?  When  the 
cosmic  show  is  over,  what  is  the  gain  ?  When  our 
universe  is  again  a  blank,  whq  or  what  will  have 
238 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

reaped  the  benefit  ?  Will  the  moral  order  which  has 
been  so  slowly  and  painfully  evolved,  and  which  so 
many  souls  have  struggled  to  live  up  to,  still  go  on  ? 
Where  ?  with  whom  ?  I  seem  to  see  dimly  that  you 
cannot  bring  the  Infinite  to  book,  that  you  cannot 
ask,  "  What  for  ?  "  of  the  All,  —  of  that  which  has 
neither  beginning  nor  end,  neither  centre  nor  cir- 
cumference, neither  fulfillment  nor  design,  which 
knows  neither  failure  nor  success,  neither  loss  nor 
gain,  and  which  is  complete  in  and  of  itself. 

We  are  tied  to  the  sphere,  its  laws  shape  our 
minds,  we  cannot  get  away  from  it  and  see  it  in 
perspective;  away  from  it  there  is  no  direction;  at 
either  pole  on  its  surface  there  is  the  contradiction 
of  the  sky  being  always  overhead.  We  are  tied  to 
the  Infinite  in  the  same  way.  We  are  part  of  it,  but 
may  not  measure  it.  Our  boldest  thought  comes 
back  like  a  projectile  fired  into  the  heavens  — 
the  curve  of  the  infinite  sphere  holds  us.  I  know 
I  am  trying  to  say  the  unsayable.  I  would  fain 
indicate  how  human  and  hopeless  is  our  question, 
"  What  for  ?  "  when  asked  of  the  totality  of  things. 
There  is  no  totality  of  things.  To  say  that  there  is, 
does  not  express  it.  To  say  there  is  not,  does  not 
express  it.  To  say  that  the  universe  was  created, 
does  not  express  the  mystery;  to  say  that  it  was 
not  created,  but  always  existed,  does  not  express 
it  any  nearer.  To  say  that  the  heavens  are  over- 
head is  only  half  the  truth ;  they  are  underfoot  also. 
239 


LEAF   AND   TENDRIL 

Down  is  toward  the  centre  of  the  earth,  but  go  on 
through  and  come  out  at  the  surface  on  the  other 
side,  and  which  way  is  down  then? 

The  Unspeakable  will  not  be  spoken. 

In  the  light  of  science  we  must  see  that  life  and 
progress  and  evolution  and  the  moral  order  must 
go  on  and  on  somewhere,  that  the  birth  of  systems 
and  the  evolution  of  planets  must  and  does  con- 
tinue, and  always  has  continued;  that  if  one  sun 
fades,  another  blazes  out;  that  as  there  must  have 
been  an  infinite  number  (how  can  there  be  an  in- 
finite number?  where  is  the  end  of  the  endless?) 
of  worlds  in  the  past,  so  there  will  be  an  infinite 
number  in  the  future;  that  if  the  moral  order  and 
the  mathematical  order  and  the  intellectual  order 
disappear  from  one  planet,  they  will  appear  in  due 
time  on  another. 

All  that  which  in  our  limited  view  of  nature  we 
call  waste  and  delay  —  how  can  such  terms  apply 
to  the  Infinite?  Can  we  ever  speak  truly  of  the 
Infinite  in  terms  of  the  finite  ?  To  be  sure,  we  have 
no  other  terms,  and  can  never  have.  Then  let  us 
be  silent  and  —  reverent. 


XII 
AN   OUTLOOK   UPON   LIFE 


THIS  chapter,  with  its  personal  and  autobio- 
graphical note,  seems  to  call  for  some  word 
of  explanation.  A  few  years  since,  a  magazine 
editor  asked  me.  as  he  asked  others,  to  tell  his 
readers  something  of  what  life  meant  to  me,  basing 
the  paper  largely  upon  my  own  personal  experi- 
ences. The  main  part  of  the  following  essay  was 
the  result.  The  paper  was  so  well  received  by  a 
good  many  readers  that,  with  some  additions,  I 
have  decided  to  include  it  in  this  collection. 

I  have  had  a  happy  life,  and  there  is  not  much 
of  it  I  would  change  if  I  could  live  it  over  again. 
I  think  I  was  born  under  happy  stars,  with  a  keen 
sense  of  wonder,  which  has  never  left  me,  and  which 
only  becomes  jaded  a  little  now  and  then,  and  with 
no  exaggerated  notion  of  my  own  deserts.  I  have 
shared  the  common  lot,  and  have  found  it  good 
enough  for  me.  Unlucky  is  the  man  who  is  born 
with  great  expectations,  and  who  finds  nothing  in 
life  quite  up  to  the  mark. 

One  of  the  best  things  a  man  can  bring  into  the 
world  with  him  is  natural  humility  of  spirit.  About 
241 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

the  next  best  thing  he  can  bring,  and  they  usually 
go  together,  is  an  appreciative  spirit  —  a  loving 
and  susceptible  heart.  If  he  is  going  to  be  a  re- 
former and  stir  up  things,  and  slay  the  dragons,  he 
needs  other  qualities  more.  But  if  he  is  going  to 
get  the  most  out  of  life  in  a  worthy  way,  if  he  is 
going  to  enjoy  the  grand  spectacle  of  the  world  from 
first  to  last,  then  he  needs  his  life  pitched  in  a  low 
key  and  well  attuned  to  common  universal  things. 
The  strained,  the  loud,  the  far-fetched,  the  extrava- 
gant, the  frenzied  —  how  lucky  we  are  to  escape 
them,  and  to  be  born  with  dispositions  that  cause 
us  to  flee  from  them! 

I  would  gladly  chant  a  psean  for  the  world  as  I 
find  it.  What  a  mighty  interesting  place  to  live 
in !  If  I  had  my  life  to  live  over  again,  and  had  my 
choice  of  celestial  abodes,  I  am  sure  I  should  take 
this  planet,  and  I  should  choose  these  men  and 
women  for  my  friends  and  companions.  This  great 
rolling  sphere  with  its  sky,  its  stars,  its  sunrises  and 
sunsets,  and  with  its'  outlook  into  infinity  —  what 
could  be  more  desirable?  What  more  satisfying? 
Garlanded  by  the  seasons,  embosomed  in  sidereal 
influences,  thrilling  with  life,  with  a  heart  of  fire 
and  a  garment  of  azure  seas,  and  fruitful  continents 
—  one  might  ransack  the  heavens  in  vain  for  a 
better  or  a  more  picturesque  abode.  As  Emerson 
says,  it  is  "  well  worth  the  heart  and  pith  of  great 
men  to  subdue  and  enjoy  it." 
242 


AN  OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

O  to  share  the  great,  sunny,  joyous  life  of  the 
earth !  to  be  as  happy  as  the  birds  are !  as  contented 
as  the  cattle  on  the  hills !  as  the  leaves  of  the  trees 
that  dance  and  rustle  in  the  wind !  as  the  waters  that 
murmur  and  sparkle  to  the  sea !  To  be  able  to  see 
that  the  sin  and  sorrow  and  suffering  of  the  world 
are  a  necessary  part  of  the  natural  course  of  things, 
a  phase  of  the  law  of  growth  and  development  that 
runs  through  the  universe,  bitter  in  its  personal 
application,  but  illuminating  when  we  look  upon 
life  as  a  whole!  Without  death  and  decay,  how 
could  life  go  on  ?  Without  what  we  call  sin  (which 
is  another  name  for  imperfection)  and  the  struggle 
consequent  upon  it,  how  could  our  development 
proceed  ?  I  know  the  waste,  the  delay,  the  suffering 
in  the  history  of  the  race  are  appalling,  but  they  only 
repeat  the  waste,  the  delay,  the  conflict  through 
which  the  earth  itself  has  gone  and  is  still  going,  and 
which  finally  issues  in  peace  and  tranquillity.  Look 
at  the  grass,  the  flowers,  the  sweet  serenity  and  re- 
pose of  the  fields  —  at  what  a  price  it  has  all  been 
bought,  of  what  a  warring  of  the  elements,  of  what 
overturnings,  and  pulverizings  and  shif tings  of  land 
and  sea,  and  slow  grindings  of  the  mills  of  the  gods 
of  the  fore-world  it  is  all  the  outcome! 

The  agony  of  Russia  at  the  present  time  (1904),  the 

fire  and  sword,  the  snapping  of  social  and  political 

ties,  the  chaos  and  destruction  that  seem  imminent 

— what  is  it  but  a  geologic  upheaval,  the  price  that 

243 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

must  be  paid  for  law  and  order  on  a  permanent 
basis  ?  We  deplore  the  waste  and  the  suffering,  but 
these  things  never  can  be  eliminated  from  the  pro- 
cesses of  evolution.  As  individuals  we  can  mitigate 
them ;  as  races  and  nations  we  have  to  endure  them. 
Waste,  pain,  delay — the  gods  smile  at  these  things; 
so  that  the  game  goes  on,  that  is  enough.  How 
many  thousand  centuries  of  darkness  and  horror 
lie  between  the  man  of  to-day  and  the  low  animal 
ancestor  from  which  he  sprang!  Who  can  picture 
the  sufferings  and  the  defeats !  But  here  we  are,  and 
all  that  terrible  past  is  forgotten,  is,  as  it  were,  the 
soil  under  our  feet. 

Our  fathers  were  cheered  and  sustained  by  a 
faith  in  special  providences  —  that  there  was  a  Su- 
preme Power  that  specially  interested  itself  in  man 
and  his  doings,  and  that  had  throughout  the  course 
of  history  turned  the  adverse  currents  in  his  favor. 
It  is  certain  that  all  things  have  worked  together 
for  the  final  good  of  the  race  as  a  whole,  otherwise 
it  would  have  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 
But  Providence  does  things  by  wholesale.  It  is  like 
the  rain  that  falls  upon  the  sea  and  the  land  equally, 
upon  the  just  and  the  unjust,  where  it  is  needed  and 
where  it  is  not  needed ;  and  the  evolution  of  the  life 
of  the  globe,  including  the  life  of  man,  has  gone  on 
and  still  goes  on,  because,  in  the  conflict  of  forces, 
the  influences  that  favored  life  and  forwarded  it 
have  in  the  end  triumphed. 
244 


AN  OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

Our  good  fortune  is  not  that  there  are  or  may 
be  special  providences  and  dispensations,  as  our 
fathers  believed,  by  which  we  may  escape  this  or 
that  evil,  but  our  good  fortune  is  that  we  have  our 
part  and  lot  in  the  total  scheme  of  things,  that  we 
share  in  the  slow  optimistic  tendency  of  the  uni- 
verse, that  we  have  life  and  health  and  wholeness 
on  the  same  terms  as  the  trees,  the  flowers,  the  grass, 
the  animals  have,  and  pay  the  same  price  for  our 
well  being,  in  struggle  and  effort,  that  they  pay. 
That  is  our  good  fortune.  There  is  nothing  acci- 
dental or  exceptional  about  it.  It  is  not  by  the 
favor  or  disfavor  of  some  god  that  things  go  well 
or  ill  with  us,  but  it  is  by  the  authority  of  the  whole 
universe,  by  the  consent  and  cooperation  of  every 
force  above  us  and  beneath  us.  The  natural  forces 
crush  and  destroy  man  when  he  transgresses  them, 
as  they  destroy  or  neutralize  one  another.  He  is 
a  part  of  the  system  of  things,  and  has  a  stake  in 
every  wind  that  blows  and  cloud  that  sails.  It  is 
to  his  final  interest,  whether  he  sees  it  or  not,  that 
water  should  always  do  the  work  of  water,  and 
fire  do  the  work  of  fire,  and  frost  do  the  work  of 
frost,  and  gravity  do  the  work  of  gravity,  though 
they  destroy  him  ("  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I 
trust  him  "),  rather  than  that  they  should  ever  fail. 
In  fact,  he  has  his  life  and  keeps  it  only  because 
the  natural  forces  and  elements  are  always  true  to 
themselves,  and  are  no  respecters  of  persons. 
245 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

We  should  not  be  here  blustering  around  and 
sitting  in  judgment  upon  the  ways  of  the  Eternal, 
had  not  the  ways  of  the  Eternal  been  without  vari- 
ableness, or  shadow  of  turning.  If  we  or  our  for- 
tunes go  down  prematurely  beneath  the  currents, 
it  is  because  the  currents  are  vital,  and  do  never 
and  can  never  cease  nor  turn  aside.  The  weakest 
force  must  give  way,  and  the  rotten  timber  break 
before  the  sound.  We  may  fancy  that  there  might 
be  a  better  universe,  but  we  cannot  conceive  of  a 
better  because  our  minds  are  the  outcome  of  things 
as  they  are,  and  all  our  ideas  of  value  are  based 
upon  the  lessons  we  learn  in  this  world. 

Nature  is  as  regardless  of  a  planet  or  a  sun  as 
of  a  bubble  upon* the  river,  has  one  no  more  at 
heart  than  the  other.  How  many  suns  have  gone 
out  ?  How  many  planets  have  perished  ?  If  the 
earth  should  collide  with  some  heavenly  body  to- 
day and  all  its  life  be  extinguished,  would  it  not 
be  just  like  spendthrift  Nature  ?  She  has  infinite 
worlds  left,  and  out  of  old  she  makes  new.  You 
cannot  lose  or  destroy  heat  or  force,  nor  add  to 
them,  though  you  seem  to  do  so.  Nature  wins  in 
every  game  because  she  bets  on  both  sides.  If  her 
suns  or  systems  fail,  it  is,  after  all,  her  laws  that 
succeed.  A  burnt-out  sun  vindicates  the  constancy 
of  her  forces. 

As  individuals  we  suffer  defeat,  injustice,  pain, 
sorrow,  premature  death;  multitudes  perish  to 
246 


AN  OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

fertilize  the  soil  that  is  to  grow  the  bread  of  other 
multitudes;  thousands  but  make  a  bridge  of  their 
dead  bodies  over  which  other  thousands  are  to  pass 
safely  to  some  land  of  promise.  The  feeble,  the 
idiotic,  the  deformed,  seem  to  suffer  injustice  at 
the  hands  of  their  maker;  there  is  no  redress,  no 
court  of  appeal  for  them;  the  verdict  of  natural 
law  cannot  be  reversed.  When  the  current  of  life 
shrinks  in  its  channel,  there  are  causes  for  it,  and 
if  these  causes  ceased  to  operate,  the  universe 
would  go  to  pieces ;  but  the  individual  whose  mea- 
sure, by  reason  of  these  causes,  is  only  half  full 
pays  the  price  of  the  sins  or  the  shortcomings  of 
others ;  his  misfortune  but  vindicates  the  law  upon 
which  our  lives  are  all  strung  as  beads  upon  a 
thread. 

In  an  orchard  of  apple  trees  some  of  the  fruit  is 
wormy,  some  scabbed,  some  dwarfed,  from  one 
cause  and  another;  but  Nature  approves  of  the 
worm,  and  of  the  fungus  that  makes  the  scab,  and 
of  the  aphid  that  makes  the  dwarf,  just  as  sincerely 
as  she  approves  of  the  perfect  fruit.  She  holds  the 
stakes  of  both  sides;  she  wins,  whoever  loses.  An 
insect  stings  a  leaf  or  a  stem,  and  instantly  all  the 
forces  and  fluids  that  were  building  the  leaf  turn  to 
building  a  home  for  the  young  of  the  insect ;  the 
leaf  is  forgotten,  and  only  the  needs  of  the  insect 
remembered,  and  we  thus  have  the  oak  gall  and 
the  hickory  gall  and  other  like  abnormalities.  The 
247 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

cancer  that  is  slowly  eating  a  man  up  —  it  too  is  the 
result  of  a  vital  process  just  as  much  as  is  the  life 
it  is  destroying.  Contagion,  infection,  pestilence, 
illustrate  the  laws  of  life.  One  thing  devours  or 
destroys  another  —  the  parasite  destroys  its  host, 
the  rust  destroys  the  wheat  or  the  oats,  the  vermin 
destroy  the  poultry,  and  so  forth ;  still  the  game  of 
life  goes  on,  and  the  best  wins,  if  not  to-day,  then 
to-morrow,  or  in  ten  thousand  years.  In  the  mean- ' 
time,  struggle,  pain,  defeat,  death,  come  in;  we 
suffer,  we  sorrow,  we  appeal  to  the  gods.  But  the 
gods  smile  and  keep  aloof,  and  the  world  goes  blun- 
dering on  because  there  are  no  other  conditions 
of  progress.  Evil  follows  good  as  its  shadow;  it 
is  inseparable  from  the  constitution  of  things.  It 
shades  the  picture,  it  affords  the  contrast,  it  gives 
the  impetus.  The  good,  the  better,  the  best  — • 
these  are  defined  to  us,  and  made  to  entice  us  by 
their  opposites.  We  never  fully  attain  them  be- 
cause our  standards  rise  as  we  rise;  what  satisfied 
us  yesterday  will  not  satisfy  us  to-day.  Peace, 
satisfaction,  true  repose,  come  only  through  effort, 
and  then  not  for  long.  I  love  to  recall  Whitman's 
words,  and  to  think  how  true  they  are  both  for 
nations  and  for  individuals :  — 

"  Now  understand  me  well  — 

It  is  provided  in  the  essence  of  things,  that  from  any  fruition  of 
success,  no  matter  what,  shall  come  forth  something  to 
make  a  greater  struggle  necessary." 

248 


AN  OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

ii 

Life  means  such  different  things  to  different  men 
and  to  different  generations  of  men ;  its  values  shift 
from  age  to  age  and  from  country  to  country. 
Think  what  it  meant  to  our  Puritan  forefathers, 
the  early  settlers  of  New  England  —  freedom  of 
religious  opinion,  and  to  worship  God  in  their  own 
way.  This  was  the  paramount  interest  and  value 
of  life.  To  secure  this,  they  were  ready  to  make 
any  sacrifice  —  friends,  home,  property,  country  — 
and  to  brave  hardship  and  dangers  to  the  end  of 
their  lives.  In  those  days  the  religious  idea  pressed 
heavily  upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  the  main  con- 
cern of  life  related  to  the  other  world.  We  in 
our  time  can  hardly  realize  the  absolute  tyranny 
of  religious  prepossessions  that  the  minds  of  our 
fathers  were  under,  and  that  the  minds  of  men 
were  under  through  all  the  Middle  Ages. 

Huxley  in  his  old  age  said :  "It  is  a  great  many 
years  since  at  the  outset  of  my  career  I  had  to  think 
seriously  what  life  had  to  offer  that  was  worth  hav- 
ing. I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  chief  good 
for  me  was  freedom  to  learn,  think,  and  say  what 
I  pleased,  when  I  pleased."  This  was  the  old  Puri- 
tan spirit  cropping  out  again,  in  quite  a  different 
field,  and  concerned  with  the  truth  as  it  is  related 
to  this  world,  quite  irrespective  of  its  possible  bear- 
ing upon  the  next. 

249 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

The  value  of  life  to  Huxley  lay  in  the  opportunity 
to  give  free  play  to  that  truth-loving  mind  of  his, 
no  matter  where  the  quest  led  him.  If  it  led  him 
into  battle,  as  it  was  bound  to  do,  so  much  the 
better.  He  was  "ever  a  fighter."  The  love  of 
Truth  was  his  paramount  passion,  but  he  loved  her 
all  the  more  if  he  saw  her  life  jeopardized  and  he 
could  make  a  gallant  charge  for  her  rescue. 

To  have  a  mind  eager  to  know  the  great  truths 
and  broad  enough  to  take  them  in,  and  not  get  lost 
in  the  maze  of  apparent  contradictions,  is  un- 
doubtedly the  highest  good.  This,  I  take  it,  is  what 
our  fathers  meant  in  their  way  by  saying  the  chief 
end  of  man  was  to  serve  God  and  glorify  him  for- 
ever. This  formula  is  not  suited  to  the  temper  of 
the  modern  scientific  mind  because  of  the  theologi- 
cal savor  that  clings  to  it.  Theological  values  have 
shrunken  enormously  in  our  time ;  but  let  the  mod- 
ern mind  express  the  idea  in  its  own  terms,  and 
it  fully  agrees.  To  love  the  Truth  and  possess  it 
forever  is  the  supreme  good. 

Of  course  Pilate's  question  of  old  comes  up,  What 
is  truth?  since  one  man's  truth  may  be  another 
man's  falsehood.  But  not  in  the  scientific  realm, 
in  the  realm  of  verifiable  objective  truth.  What  is 
one  man's  truth  here  must  be  all  men's  truth.  What 
is  one  man's  truth  in  the  business  affairs  of  life  - 
in  trade,  in  banking,  in  mechanics,  in  agriculture,  in 
law  —  must  be  all  men's  truth.  It  would  seem  as 
250 


AN  OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

if  what  is  one  man's  truth  in  so  vital  a  matter  as 
religion  ought  to  be  all  men's  truth.  But  it  is  not. 
Religion  is  such  an  intensely  personal  and  subjec- 
tive matter  that  no  two  men  stand  at  just  the  same 
angle  with  reference  to  any  one  proposition,  at 
least  to  the  evidence  of  the  truth  of  that  proposition. 
The  question  of  the  soul's  immortality  seems  such 
a  vital  question  to  some,  while  others  are  quite 
indifferent  to  it.  One  man  says,  I  must  have  proof. 
I  cannot  rest  in  the  idea  that  death  ends  all. 
Another  says,  What  matters  it?  I  am  not  sure 
I  want  endless  existence.  Ingersoll  felt  this  way. 
Then  if  death  does  end  all,  we  shall  not  lie  in  our 
graves  lamenting  our  fate.  If  it  does  not,  so  much 
the  better. 

But  is  any  form  of  religious  belief  such  a  vital 
matter  after  all  ?  What  noble  and  beautiful  lives  have 
been  lived  by  people  of  just  opposite  religious 
creeds.  A  man's  creed,  in  our  day  at  least,  seems 
to  affect  his  life  little  more  than  the  clothes  he  wears. 
The  church  has  lost  its  power,  its  promises  have 
lost  their  lure,  its  threats  have  lost  their  terror.  It 
is  a  question  why  church  attendance  has  so  fallen 
off.  In  earlier  times  people  attended  church  from  a 
sense  of  duty;  now  the  masses  go  only  when  there  is 
a  promise  of  pleasure,  and  that  is  less  and  less  often. 

Errors  of  religious  belief  are  not  serious.  If  they 
were,  chaos  would  have  come  long  ago.  Each  age 
repudiates  or  modifies  the  creed  of  the  preceding, 
251 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

trims  it  or  renews  it  as  a  man  trims  his  orchard, 
lopping  off  the  dead  branches,  or  grafting  new  ones 
on,  or  resetting  it  entirely.  All  denominations  are 
grafting  on  more  liberal  and  more  charitable  views. 
The  stock  of  religious  ideas  is  undoubtedly  improv- 
ing —  less  personal,  perhaps,  but  more  broadly  in- 
tellectual —  generalizations  from  more  universal 
facts. 

In  morality,  what  is  one  man's  truth  ought  to  be 
all  men's  truth,  because  morality  is  a  matter  of  con- 
duct toward  our  fellows.  We  may  fail  to  keep  our 
promises  to  our  gods  and  nothing  comes  of  it,  but 
if  we  forget  our  promissory  notes,  something  does 
come  of  it,  and,  as  like  as  not,  that  something 
takes  the  form  of  the  sheriff. 

The  scientific  mind,  like  Huxley's,  looks  with 
amazement  upon  the  credulity  of  the  theological 
mind,  upon  its  low  standard  of  evidence. 

There  are  currents  and  currents  in  life.  A  river 
is  one  kind  of  current,  the  Gulf  Stream  is  another. 
The  currents  in  the  affairs  of  men  are  more  like  the 
latter  —  obscure  in  their  origin,  vague  and  shifting 
in  their  boundaries,  and  mysterious  in  their  endings, 
and  the  result  of  large  cosmic  forces.  There  are 
movements  in  the  history  of  men's  minds  that  are 
local  and  temporary  like  that,  say,  of  the  Crusaders, 
or  of  Witchcraft,  and  there  are  others  that  are  like 
ocean  currents,  a  trend  of  the  universal  mind.  The 
rise  and  growth  of  rationalism  seems  of  this  kind, 


AN  OUTLOOK   UPON  LIFE 

the  scientific  spirit,  the  desire  to  prove  all  things, 
and  to  hold  fast  to  that  which  is  good.  It  is  the  con- 
ditions of  proof  that  have  become  strenuous  and 
exacting.  The  standard  of  the  good  has  not  gone 
up  so  much  as  the  standard  of  evidence.  We  prove 
a  thing  now  not  by  an  appeal  to  a  text  of  some  book, 
or  to  any  ecclesiastical  court,  but  by  an  appeal  to 
reason.  An  appeal  to  conscience  is  not  conclusive, 
because  conscience  is  more  or  less  the  creature  of 
the  hour,  or  of  custom,  or  of  training,  but  reason 
emancipates  us  from  all  false  or  secondary  consider- 
ations, and  enables  us  to  see  the  thing  as  it  is,  in  and 
of  itself. 

HI 

I  have  drifted  into  deeper  waters  than  I  intended 
to  when  I  set  out.  I  meant  to  have  kept  nearer  the 
shore.  I  have  had,  I  say,  a  happy  life.  When  I  was 
a  young  man  (twenty-five),  I  wrote  a  little  poem 
called  "Waiting,"  which  has  had  quite  a  history, 
and  the  burden  of  which  is,  "  My  own  shall  come  to 
me."  What  my  constitution  demands,  the  friends, 
the  helps,  the  fulfillments,  the  opportunities,  I  shall 
find  somewhere,  some  time.  It  was  a  statement  of 
the  old  doctrine  of  the  elective  affinities.  Those 
who  are  born  to  strife  and  contention  find  strife 
and  contention  ready  at  their  hand ;  those  who  are 
born  for  gentleness  and  love  find  gentleness  and 
love  drawn  to  them.  The  naturally  suspicious  and 
distrustful  find  the  world  in  conspiracy  against 

253 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

them;  the  unkind,  the  hard-hearted,  see  themselves 
in  their  fellows  about  them.  The  tone  in  which  we 
speak  to  the  world,  the  world  speaks  to  us.  Give 
your  best  and  you  will  get  the  best  in  return. 
Give  in  heaping  measure  and  in  heaping  measure 
it  shall  be  returned.  We  all  get  our  due  sooner  or 
later,  in  one  form  or  another.  "  Be  not  weary  in 
well  doing;"  the  reward  will  surely  come,  if  not  in 
worldly  goods,  then  in  inward  satisfaction,  grace  of 
spirit,  peace  of  mind. 

All  the  best  things  of  my  life  have  come  to  me 
unsought,  but  I  hope  not  unearned.  That  would 
contradict  the  principle  of  equity  I  have  been  illus- 
trating. A  man  does  not,  in  the  long  run,  get  wages 
he  has  not  earned.  What  I  mean  is  that  most  of 
the  good  things  of  my  life  —  friends,  travel,  oppor- 
tunity—  have  been  unexpected.  I  do  not  feel  that 
fortune  has  driven  sharp  bargains  with  me.  I  am 
not  a  disappointed  man.  Blessed  is  he  who  expects 
little,  but  works  as  if  he  expected  much.  Sufficient 
unto  the  day  is  the  good  thereof.  I  have  invested 
myself  in  the  present  moment,  in  the  things  near 
at  hand,  in  the  things  that  all  may  have  on  equal 
terms.  If  one  sets  one's  heart  on  the  exceptional, 
the  far-off  —  on  riches,  on  fame,  on  power  —  the 
chances  are  he  will  be  disappointed ;  he  will  waste 
his  time  seeking  a  short  cut  to  these  things.  There 
is  no  short  cut.  For  anything  worth  having  one 
must  pay  the  price,  and  the  price  is  always  work, 
254 


AN  OUTLOOK   UPON  LIFE 

patience,  love,  self-sacrifice  —  no  paper  currency, 
no  promises  to  pay,  but  the  gold  of  real  servipe. 

I  am  not  decrying  ambition,  the  aiming  high, 
only  there  is  no  use  aiming  unless  you  are  loaded, 
and  it  is  the  loading,  and  the  kind  of  material  to 
be  used,  that  one  is  first  to  be  solicitous  about. 

"Serene  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait;"  but  if  I 
have  waited  one  day,  I  have  hustled  the  next.  If 
I  have  had  faith  that  my  own  would  come  to  me,  I 
have  tried  to  make  sure  that  it  was  my  own,  and 
not  that  of  another.  Waiting  with  me  has  been 
mainly  a  cheerful  acquiescence  in  the  order  of  the 
universe  as  I  found  it  —  a  faith  in  the  essential 
veracity  of  things.  I  have  waited  for  the  sun  to 
rise  and  for  the  seasons  to  come ;  I  have  waited 
for  a  chance  to  put  in  my  oar.  Which  way  do  the 
currents  of  my  being  set  ?  What  do  I  love  that  is 
worthy  and  of  good  report  ?  I  will  extend  myself  in 
this  direction ;  I  will  annex  this  territory.  I  will  not 
wait  to  see  if  this  or  that  pays,  if  this  or  that  notion 
draws  the  multitude.  I  will  wait  only  till  I  can  see 
my  way  clearly.  In  the  meantime  I  will  be  clear- 
ing my  eyes  and  training  them  to  know  the  real 
values  of  life  when  they  see  them. 

Waiting  for  some  one  else  to  do  your  work,  for 
what  you  have  not  earned  to  come  to  you,  is  to  mur- 
der time.  Waiting  for  something  to  turn  up  is 
equally  poor  policy,  unless  you  have  already  set  the 
currents  going  that  will  cause  a  particular  some- 
255 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

thing  to  turn  up.  The  farmer  waits  for  his  harvest 
after  he  has  sown  the  seed.  The  sailor  waits  for 
a  breeze  after  he  has  spread  his  sail.  Much  of  life 
is  taken  up  in  waiting  —  fruitful  waiting. 

I  never  have  sought  wealth,  I  have  been  too  much 
absorbed  in  enjoying  the  world  about  me.  I  had  no 
talent  for  business  anyhow  —  for  the  cutthroat  com- 
petition that  modern  business  for  the  most  part  is  — 
and  probably  could  not  have  attained  wealth  had  I 
desired  it.  I  dare  not  aver  that  I  had  really  rather 
be  cheated  than  to  cheat,  but  I  am  quite  sure  I 
could  never  knowingly  overreach  a  man,  and  what 
chance  of  success  could  such  a  tenderfoot  have  in 
the  conscienceless  struggle  for  money  that  goes  on 
in  the  business  world  ?  I  am  a  fairly  successful 
farmer  and  fruit-grower.  I  love  the  soil,  I  love  to 
see  the  crops  grow  and  mature,  but  the  marketing 
of  them,  the  turning  of  them  into  money,  grinds  my 
soul  because  of  the  sense  of  strife  and  competition 
that  pervades  the  air  of  the  market-place.  If  one 
could  afford  to  give  one's  fruit  away,  after  he  had 
grown  it  to  perfection,  to  people  who  would  be  sure 
to  appreciate  it,  that  would  be  worth  while,  and 
would  leave  no  wounds.  But  that  is  what  I  have  in 
a  sense  done  with  my  intellectual  products.  I  have 
not  written  one  book  for  money  (yes,  one,  and  that 
was  a  failure) ;  I  have  written  them  for  love,  and 
the  modest  sum  they  have  brought  me  has  left  no 
sting. 

256 


AN   OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

I  look  upon  this  craze  for  wealth  that  possesses 
nearly  all  classes  in  our  time  as  one  of  the  most 
lamentable  spectacles  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
The  old  prayer,  "  Give  me  neither  poverty  nor 
riches,"  is  the  only  sane  one.  The  grand  mistake 
we  make  is  in  supposing  that  because  a  little  money 
is  a  good  thing,  unlimited  means  is  the  sum  of  all 
good,  or  that  our  happiness  will  keep  pace  with  the 
increase  of  our  possessions.  But  such  is  not  the 
case,  because  the  number  of  things  we  can  really 
make  our  own  is  limited.  We  cannot  drink  the  ocean 
be  we  ever  so  thirsty.  A  cup  of  water  from  the 
spring  is  all  we  need.  A  friend  of  mine  once  said 
that  if  he  outlived  his  wife,  he  should  put  upon  her 
tombstone,  "  Died  of  Things  "  —  killed  by  the  mul- 
titude of  her  possessions.  The  number  of  people 
who  are  thus  killed  is  no  doubt  very  great.  When 
Thoreau  found  that  the  specimens  and  curiosi- 
ties that  had  accumulated  upon  his  mantel-piece 
needed  dusting,  he  pitched  them  out  of  the  window. 

The  massing  of  a  great  fortune  is  a  perilous  enter- 
prise. The  giving  away  of  a  great  fortune  is  equally 
a  perilous  enterprise,  not  to  the  man  who  gives  it  — 
it  ought  to  be  salutary  to  him  —  but  to  his  bene- 
ficiaries. 

Very  many  of  the  great  fortunes  of  our  time  have 

been  accumulated  by  a  process  like  that  of  turning 

all  the  streams  into  your  private  reservoir :  they  have 

caused  a  great  many  people  somewhere  to  be  short 

257 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

of  water,  and  have  taken  away  the  power  of  many 
busy,  peaceful  wheels.  The  ideal  condition  is  an 
even  distribution  of  wealth.  When  you  try  to  give 
away  your  monstrous  fortune,  to  open  your  dam, 
then  danger  begins,  because  you  cannot  return  the 
waters  to  their  natural  channels.  You  must  make 
new  channels,  and  you  may  do  more  harm  than  good. 
It  never  can  go  now  where  it  would  have  gone.  The 
wealth  is  in  a  measure  redistributed,  without  en- 
riching those  from  whom  it  originally  came.  Few 
millionaires  could  face  the  questions :  Have  you 
rendered  a  service  to  your  fellows  in  proportion 
to  your  wealth  ?  Have  you  earned  your  fortune,  or 
have  you  grabbed  it  ?  Is  it  an  addition  to  the  wealth 
of  the  world,  or  a  subtraction  from  the  wealth  which 
others  have  earned  ?  The  wealth  that  comes  to  a 
man  through  his  efforts  in  furthering  the  work  of 
the  world  and  promoting  the  good  of  all  is  the  only 
worthy  wealth. 

Beyond  the  point  of  a  moderate  competency, 
wealth  is  a  burden.  A  man  may  possess  a  compe- 
tency ;  great  wealth  possesses  him.  He  is  the  victim. 
It  fills  him  with  unrest;  it  destroys  or  perverts 
his  natural  relations  to  his  fellows ;  it  corrupts  his 
simplicity;  it  thrusts  the  false  values  of  life  before 
him ;  it  gives  him  power  which  it  is  dangerous  to 
exercise ;  it  leads  to  self-indulgence ;  it  hardens  the 
heart;  it  fosters  a  false  pride.  To  give  it  away  is 
perilous ;  to  keep  it  is  to  invite  care  and  vexation  of 
258 


AN   OUTLOOK  UPON  LIFE 

spirit.  For  a  rich  man  to  lead  the  simple  life  is  about 
as  hard  as  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  needle's 
eye.  How  many  things  stand  between  him  and  the 
simple  open  air  of  our  common  humanity !  Marcus 
Aurelius  thought  a  man  might  be  happy  even  in 
a  palace ;  but  it  takes  a  Marcus  Aurelius  —  a  man 
whose  simplicity  of  character  is  incorruptible  —  to 
be  so.  Yet  I  have  no  disposition  to  rail  at  wealth 
as  such,  though  the  penalties  and  dangers  that 
attend  it  are  very  obvious.  I  never  expect  to  see 
it  go  out  of  fashion.  Its  unequal  distribution  in  all 
times,  no  doubt,  results  from  natural  causes. 

Sooner  or  later  things  find  their  proper  level,  and 
the  proper  level  of  some  things  is  on  top.  In  the 
jostle  and  strife  of  this  world  the  strong  men,  the 
master  minds,  are  bound  to  be  on  top.  This  is 
inevitable ;  the  very  laws  of  matter  are  on  their  side. 

Not  socialism,  or  any  other  "ism,"  can  perma- 
nently equalize  the  fortunes  of  men.  The  strong 
will  dominate,  the  weak  must  succumb.  "  For 
whosoever  hath,  to  him  shall  be  given,  and  he 
shall  have  more  abundance:  but  whosoever  hath 
not,  from  him  shall  be  taken  away  even  that  he 
hath."  Power  draws  power;  inefficiency  loses  even 
that  which  it  hath.  To  abolish  poverty,  to  abolish 
wealth,  we  must  first  abolish  the  natural  inequality 
among  mankind.  It  is  as  if  some  men  had  longer 
arms  than  others  and  could  reach  the  fruit  on  the 
tree  of  opportunity  beyond  the  grasp  of  their  com- 
259 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

petitors.  Shall  we  cut  off  their  arms  ?  No,  we  can 
only  shame  them  out  of  making  hogs  of  themselves 
and  of  laying  up  greater  stores  than  they  can 
possibly  use.  In  our  day  and  country,  the  golden 
fruit  on  the  tree  has  been  so  abundant  that  the 
long-armed  men  have  degenerated  into  wealth-ma- 
niacs, and  have  resorted  to  all  manner  of  unfair 
means;  they  have  trampled  down  the  shorter- 
armed  men,  and  gained  an  advantage  on  their  pros- 
trate bodies.  'That  is  where  the  injustice  comes 
in.  Some  of  our  monstrous  trusts  and  combines, 
for  instance,  have  killed  competition  by  foul  and 
underhanded  means ;  they  have  crowded  or  thrust 
their  competitors  entirely  away  from  the  tree,  or 
else  have  mounted  up  on  their  shoulders.  They 
have  resorted  to  the  methods  of  the  robber  and 
assassin. 

I  am  bound  to  praise  the  simple  life,  because  I 
have  lived  it  and  found  it  good.  When  I  depart 
from  it,  evil  results  follow.  I  love  a  small  house, 
plain  clothes,  simple  living.  Many  persons  know 
the  luxury  of  a  skin  bath  —  a  plunge  in  the  pool 
or  the  wave  unhampered  by  clothing.  That  is  the 
simple  life  —  direct  and  immediate  contact  with 
things,  life  with  the  false  wrappings  torn  away  — 
the  fine  house,  the  fine  equipage,  the  expensive 
habits,  all  cut  off.  How  free  one  feels,  how  good  the 
elements  taste,  how  close  one  gets  to  them,  how  they 
fit  one's  body  and  one's  soul !  To  see  the  fire  that 
260 


AN   OUTLOOK   UPON  LIFE 

warms  you,  or  better  yet,  to  cut  the  wood  that  feeds 
the  fire  that  warms  you;  to  see  the  spring  where 
the  water  bubbles  up  that  slakes  your  thirst,  and  to 
dip  your  pail  into  it;  to  see  the  beams  that  are  the 
stay  of  your  four  walls,  and  the  timbers  that  uphold 
the  roof  that  shelters  you ;  to  be  in  direct  and  per- 
sonal contact  with  the  sources  of  your  material  life ; 
to  want  no  extras,  no  shields;  to  find  the  universal 
elements  enough;  to  find  the  air  and  the  water 
exhilarating;  to  be  refreshed  by  a  morning  walk 
or  an  evening  saunter ;  to  find  a  quest  of  wild  ber- 
ries more  satisfying  than  a  gift  of  tropic  fruit ;  to  be 
thrilled  by  the  stars  at  night;  to  be  elated  over  a 
bird's  nest,  or  over  a  wild  flower  in  spring  —  these 
are  some  of  the  rewards  of  the  simple  life. 


XIII 
'ALL'S     RIGHT   WITH     THE     WORLD" 


WHETHER  or  not  we  can  accept  Browning's 
morning  line,  "  All 's  right  with  the  world," 
depends  upon  our  point  of  view.  To  the  intellect, 
the  disinterested  faculties,  undoubtedly,  all's  right 
with  the  world.  To  the  seeing  mind  nature  presents 
a  series,  an  infinite  series,  of  logical  sequences; 
cause  and  effect  are  inseparably  joined,  and  things 
could  in  no  wise  be  other  than  what  they  are.  The 
forces  that  destroy  us  are  only  going  their  appointed 
ways,  and  if  they  turned  out  or  made  an  exception 
on  our  account,  the  very  foundations  of  the  universe 
would  be  impeached. 

The  creation  is  good,  and  man's  explanation  and 
vindication  of  it  have  given  rise  to  what  we  call 
science.  One  recalls  Whitman's  lines :  — 

"I  lie  abstracted  and  hear  beautiful  tales  of  things  and  the 

reasons  of  things, 
They  are  so  beautiful  I  nudge  myself  to  listen." 

To  our  aesthetic  faculties,  all's   right  with   the 
world.    What  beauty,  what  grandeur,  what  per- 
fection! the  sum  of  all  we  know  or  can  know  of 
263 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

these  qualities.     Sin,  decay,  ruin,  death  —  all  add 
to  the  picturesqueness  of  the  world. 

But  to  our  moral  sentiments,  our  sense  of  good- 
ness, mercy,  justice,  benevolence,  humility,  self- 
denial  —  all  those  tender  and  restraining  feelings 
that  are  called  into  action  through  our  relations  to 
our  fellows,  all  is  not  right  with  the  world.  All, 
or  nearly  all,  is  wrong  with  the  world.  So  much  so 
that  our  fathers,  to  account  for  it,  had  to  suppose 
some  dire  catastrophe  had  befallen  creation  and 
frustrated  the  original  plan  of  the  Creator.  Hence 
the  myth  of  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  Garden,  and  the 
forbidden  fruit  that 

"Brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe." 

The  world  is  full  of  pain,  suffering,  cruelty,  sin, 
defeat,  injustice,  hope  deferred,  calamities  of  fire, 
flood,  storm,  pestilence,  wars,  famine  —  young  lives 
cut  off  in  their  bloom,  old  lives  ending  in  sorrow 
and  decrepitude,  iniquity  on  the  throne,  virtue  in 
the  dust.  How  is  love  thwarted,  how  is  pity  shocked, 
how  is  our  sense  of  mercy  and  of  justice  outraged, 
when  we  look  out  upon  the  world,  past  or  present! 

Tract  after  tract  of  history  is  knee-deep  with 
blood,  and  mostly  innocent  blood.  The  cruelty  of 
rulers,  the  blindness  and  infatuation  of  the  people, 
the  superstition  of  priests  —  waste,  failures,  anguish, 
treachery,  greed  everywhere  —  how  the  moral  nature 
revolts  at  the  spectacle  of  it  all ! 
264 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

Cardinal  Newman  drew  back  from  the  spectacle 
with  the  deepest  distress.  Not  seeing  God  in  the 
world,  he  said,  was  like  looking  into  a  mirror  and 
not  seeing  his  own  face  there.  He  could  account 
for  the  fact  only  by  inferring  that  the  human  race 
was  implicated  in  some  terrible  aboriginal  calam- 
ity. Had  the  cardinal  looked  creation  over,  he 
would  have  seen  evidence  of  the  same  merciless 
strife,  the  same  cruel  struggle,  and  mystery,  and 
failure  everywhere. 

This  is  the  verdict  of  the  moral  sense,  the  cry  of 
the  wounded  heart.  It  is  not  the  vision  of  the  intel- 
lect, it  is  the  plaint  of  the  benevolent  emotions.  In 
the  face  of  it  all  the  serene  reason  still  sings,  All's 
well  with  the  world,  all's  well  with  man;  still  he 
mounts  and  mounts ;  "  rise  after  rise  bow  the  phan- 
toms behind  "  him ;  sin  and  suffering  are  a  condition 
of  growth  and  development;  the  great  laws  are 
impersonal;  the  God  of  the  intellect  is  without 
variableness  or  shadow  of  turning,  he  sends  his 
rain  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike,  and  though 
he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  him ;  though  a  cry  of  pain 
and  anguish  ever  goes  up  from  the  earth  to  a  deaf 
heaven,  the  reason  sees  that  life  and  the  joy  of  life 
can  be  had  on  no  other  terms. 

Newman  found  God  only  when  he  looked  into 

his  own  conscience,  into  that  artificial  personality, 

as  Huxley  called  it,  which  has  been  built  up  in  each 

of  us  through  ages  of  contact  with  our  fellows. 

265 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

There  he  found  the  benevolence,  the  love,  the  sense 
of  justice,  which  he  failed  to  find  in  the  world  with- 
out. It  is  not  a  mere  fling  or  witty  retort  that  man 
creates  God  in  his  own  image;  it  is  profoundly 
true.  And  then  he  torments  himself  that  he  does 
not  see  this  image  reflected  in  nature.  More  and 
more,  as  his  evolution  goes  on,  he  loves  mercy,  jus- 
tice, goodness,  and  more  and  more  he  endows  his 
gods  with  these  attributes.  In  the  long-past  time, 
when  those  sentiments  were  far  less  developed  in 
man,  we  find  his  gods  much  more  cruel  and  wicked. 
All  moral  and  ethical  sentiments  and  aspirations 
are  purely  personal,  and  relate  to  man  in  society. 
They  are  the  fruit  of  the  social  aggregate.  It  may 
be  said  with  a  measure  of  truth  that  while  man's 
intellect  is  from  God,  his  moral  nature  is  the  work 
of  his  own  hands.  His  reason  is  reflected  in  the 
course  of  nature;  it  is  in  unison  with  the  cosmic 
process ;  it  looks  upon  the  world  and  says  it  is  good ; 
it  is  consistent  and  fulfills  its  own  end.  But  his 
moral  nature  is  not  reflected  in  the  objective  world ; 
there  is  hardly  a  trace  of  it  there ;  there  is  only  law 
which  knows  no  mercy,  or  tenderness,  or  forgiveness, 
or  self-sacrifice,  and  which  is  oblivious  to  pain  and 
suffering.  Hence  the  God  which  our  moral  nature 
demands  is  not  found  in  the  world;  to  the  cosmic 
process  he  is  a  stranger;  it  rules  him  out  as  it  rules 
out  all  our  human  weaknesses.  Fly  to  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth,  and  you  will  not  find  him  there, 
266 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

or  soar  to  the  heavens  or  dive  to  the  depths,  and  you 
will  not  find  him  there.  Infinite  and  eternal  power 
you  find,  but  not  the  God  of  love  and  mercy  that 
the  moral  nature  craves.  Only  in  the  human  heart 
do  you  find  this  God.  Hence  our  fathers  looked 
upon  man  as  something  entirely  apart  from  nature ; 
he  was  not  the  result  of  the  cosmic  process,  but  a 
special  creation,  endowed  with  special  powers,  and 
given  an  immortal  soul,  which  was  denied  to  all 
other  creatures. 

It  is  only  by  regarding  man  as  a  part  of  nature, 
as  the  outcome  of  the  same  vital  forces  underfoot 
and  overhead  that  the  plants  and  the  animals  are, 
that  we  can  find  God  in  the  world. 

When  the  intellect  from  its  height  of  observation 
surveys  man  and  the  world,  it  sees  that  he  is  neces- 
sarily a  part  of  nature,  and  that  all  he  has  done  and 
thought  and  suffered,  all  his  arts  and  religions  and 
literatures,  all  his  dreams  and  visions  and  aspira- 
tions, came  out  of  the  earth,  were  evolved  through 
the  working  of  natural  or  cosmic  laws,  because  the 
reasoning  mind  cannot  admit  of  the  arbitrary  intro- 
duction of  any  force  or  influence  from  without.  The 
chain  of  cause  and  effect  is  never  broken,  and  all 
the  noble  and  godlike  traits  of  man,  all  his  love 
and  heroism  and  self-denial,  as  well  as  all  his  baser 
animal  traits  —  his  hates,  his  revenges,  his  cruelty, 
his  lusts,  his  meannesses  of  one  kind  or  another  — 
are  not  from  some  extraneous  source,  are  not  for- 
267 


LEAF  AND   TENDRIL 

tuitous  and  unrelated,  but  have  their  root  in  the 
constitution  of  things.  There  is  nothing  on  or  in 
the  earth  that  is  not  of  the  earth;  it  is  all  latent  or 
patent  in  the  cosmic  process. 

ii 

Strange  how  men  have  speculated  about  the  ori- 
gin of  evil,  and  built  themselves  cages  in  which  to 
bruise  their  own  wings.  Evil  has  been  regarded  as 
something  as  positive  as  light,  or  heat,  or  any  tangi- 
ble object.  Our  moral  and  religious  nature  has  so 
regarded  it,  but  the  reason  sees  that  evil  is  only 
the  shadow  of  good,  and  is  as  inevitable  as  good 
is  inevitable.  Life  has  its  positive  and  its  negative 
sides.  Its  positive  side  is  health  and  growth  and 
enjoyment,  its  negative  side  is  disease  and  decay 
and  suffering.  All  that  favors  the  former  is  good, 
all  that  leads  to  the  latter  is  bad,  relatively  bad. 
Disease  is  only  another  form  of  life.  The  germs 
that  are  pulling  us  down  and  destroying  us  in  ty- 
phoid fever  or  cholera  are  healthy  and  thriving  if 
we  are  not.  What  is  good  for  them  is  bad  for  us. 
Life  preys  upon  life  everywhere,  and  the  devoured 
is  the  victim  of  evil.  We  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being  submerged  in  an  ocean  of  germs,  myriads 
of  them  for  us  and  myriads  of  them  against  us  on 
occasion ;  one  kind  building  up,  another  kind  pull- 
ing down,  and,  as  it  were,  redistributing  the  type. 
Life  as  we  know  it  could  not  go  on  without  both 
268 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

kinds.  Without  the  germs  of  fermentation,  for 
instance,  what  would  happen  to  the  world  ?  With- 
out the  germs  that  break  down  animal  and  vege- 
table tissue  and  redistribute  the  elements  of  which 
they  are  composed  —  the  germs  of  death  —  how 
long  could  life  go  on  ? 

A  fever  tortures  and  burns  my  flesh  because  the 
body  fights  against  the  germs  that  would  destroy 
it.  It  is  one  form  of  life  struggling  with  another 
form.  A  festering  pool  in  the  fields  or  woods  con- 
ceals chemical  processes  that  all  favor  life. 

Life  is  the  result  of  a  certain  balance  between 
what  we  call  good  and  evil  forces.  Destroy  that 
balance,  that  harmonious  adjustment,  and  death 
or  disease  follows.  We  imperil  it  when  we  eat  too 
much,  or  drink  too  much,  or  work  too  hard,  or 
sleep  too  little,  or  exclude  the  air  and  sunlight 
from  our  houses.  A  pestilence  is  just  as  much  an 
evidence  of  the  health  and  soundness  of  nature  as 
is  immunity  from  it,  only  it  is  the  health  of  forces 
that  for  reasons  antagonize  our  health.  We  have 
let  the  enemy  encamp  and  intrench  in  our  midst 
while  we  slumbered.  If  we  had  life  on  easier  terms 
than  eternal  vigilance,  what  would  it  be  worth  ?  If 
we  want  to  escape  blow-flies  and  mosquitoes  and 
the  contagion  of  this  or  that,  let  us  go  to  the  Arctic 
or  Antarctic  regions,  where  death  reigns  perpetual. 

Struggle  is  the  condition  of  evolution,  and  evo- 
lution is  the  road  all  life  has  traveled.  Moral  evil 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

pertains  only  to  man,  and  is  incident  to  his  growth 
and  development.  To  bear  false  witness  against 
one's  neighbor,  or  to  steal,  or  to  be  cruel  or  covet- 
ous, are  moral  evils  which  we  become  conscious 
of  only  when  we  have  reached  a  higher  moral 
plane.  The  animal  is  not  involved  in  such  evils. 
Violence  and  fraud  and  injustice  attest  the  exist- 
ence of  higher  qualities.  They  are  shadows  and 
not  real  entities,  the  shortcomings  of  the  unripe 
animal  man.  A  foul  day  is  just  as  much  a  legiti- 
mate part  of  our  weather  system  as  a  fair  day; 
and  is  it  in  itself  any  more  evil  ? 

What  I  mean  to  say  is  that  the  whole  category  of 
moral  evils,  from  petty  slander  to  gigantic  stealing, 
from  political  corruption  to  social  debauchery,  are 
only  eddies  or  back  currents  that  attest  the  onward 
flow  of  moral  progress.  A  parasite  is  an  evil,  but  it 
could  not  exist  without  a  host  to  prey  upon. 

Moral  evil,  like  physical  evil,  is  bestowed  by  the 
same  hand  that  bestows  the  moral  good;  it  is  the 
fruit  of  the  same  tree  —  the  wormy  and  scabby 
fruit  —  and  while  every  effort  is  to  be  made  to 
remedy  it,  we  are  not  to  regard  it  as  something 
foreign  to  us,  something  the  origin  of  which  is  in- 
volved in  mystery,  a  subject  for  metaphysical  or 
theological  hair-splitting,  and  adequate  to  account 
for  the  strained  relations,  as  our  fathers  viewed  it, 
between  God  and  man.  Development  implies  im- 
perfection ;  as  long  as  our  course  is  upward,  we  have 
270 


ALL  'S   RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

not  yet  reached  the  top  of  the  hill.  Our  standards 
rise  as  we  rise,  and  the  ideal  always  does  and  always 
will  outrun  the  real.  We  may  produce  a  perfect 
apple  or  a  perfect  peach,  or  plum,  or  pear,  but  not 
a  perfect  man,  because  to  man  are  opened  infinite 
possibilities.  Perfect  in  honesty,  in  sobriety,  in 
truthfulness,  but  not  perfect  in  love,  or  sympathy, 
in  self-denial,  in  veneration,  or  in  wisdom.  That 
good  and  evil  are  not  such  strangers  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that  present  evil  may  turn  out  a  future  good, 
and  vice  versa.  All  the  world  looks  upon  poverty 
as  an  evil,  yet  of  what  men  has  it  been  the  making! 
Reverses  in  business  have  often  put  a  man  upon  a 
road  that  led  to  a  higher  success  than  was  possible 
under  the  old  conditions,  a  success  which  only  veri- 
fies the  soundness  of  the  principles  the  disregarding 
of  which  led  to  the  past  failure.  If  gravity  did  not 
pull  your  faulty  structure  down,  it  would  not  enable 
your  sound  structure  to  stand  up.  If  the  rain  did 
not  come  through  your  rotten  roof,  it  would  not 
percolate  to  the  roots  of  the  grass  in  the  ground. 
Indeed,  to  abolish  the  possibility  of  evil  from  the 
universe  would  be  to  abolish  the  possibility  of  good. 
If  vice  and  crime  did  not  arise  under  certain  condi- 
tions in  society,  all  social  progress  would  be  barred. 
Out  of  the  desire  to  better  our  condition  comes  the 
greed  of  wealth  and  the  hoggishness  of  the  million- 
aire. Out  of  sex  love  comes  lust  and  fornication; 
out  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  comes  base 
271 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

selfishness;  the  feeling  of  self-respect  pushed  a 
little  too  far  becomes  pride  and  vainglory;  faith 
degenerates  into  credulity,  worship  into  idolatry, 
deference  into  fawning,  firmness  into  hardness  of 
heart,  self-reliance  into  arrogance.  The  danger 
that  threatens  repose  is  stagnation,  that  threatens 
industry  is  greed,  that  threatens  thrift  is  avarice, 
that  threatens  power  is  tyranny.  Everywhere  are 
things  linked  together,  every  virtue  has  its  vice, 
every  good  has  its  ill,  every  sweet  has  its  bitter, 
and  the  bitter  is  often  the  best  medicine. 

What  shall  we  say,  then  ?  Shall  we  be  tolerant  of 
evil  ?  Shall  we  embrace  vice  as  well  as  virtue  ?  No ; 
but  we  shall  cease  to  try  to  persuade  ourselves  "  that 
the  celestial  laws  need  to  be  worked  over  and  rec- 
tified," that  there  is  some  ingrained  defect  in  God's 
universe,  and  that  the  divine  plan  miscarried; 
that  man  in  this  world  has  got  the  bad  end  of  a  bad 
bargain.  We  get  sooner  or  later  what  we  pay  for, 
and  we  do  not  'get  what  we  do  not  pay  for,  and 
there  is  no  credit  system. 

"All's  right  with  the  world."  I  know  it  does 
not  soothe  the  bruises  of  the  victim  of  a  railroad 
smash-up  to  be  told  that  the  laws  of  force  could 
not  act  differently,  nor  the  disappointment  of  the 
farmer  when  his  crops  are  burned  up  by  the  drought 
to  be  assured  that  the  weather  system  is  still  running 
all  right  elsewhere,  nor  the  sick  and  the  suffering  to 
be  told  that  pain  too  is  a  guardian  angel ;  and  yet  it 
272 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

is  something  to  know  that  things  look  better  under 
the  surface,  that  there  is  no  profound  conspiracy 
of  evil  against  us,  that  the  universe  really  has  the 
well-being  of  each  of  us  at  heart,  and  that  if  we  fall 
short  of  that  well-being,  we  are  not  the  victims  of  a 
malignant  spirit,  but  the  sufferers  from  the  opera- 
tion of  a  beneficent  law. 

The  universe  has  our  well-being  at  heart  in  a 
general,  universal  sense,  and  not  in  a  personal  sense. 
For  instance,  our  lives  depend  upon  the  bounty  of 
the  rain,  and  yet  the  rain  does  not  accommodate 
itself  to  the  special  personal  needs  of  this  man  or 
that  man,  and  it  may  result  in  a  flood  that  brings 
death  and  ruin  in  its  path.  Like  all  other  things  in 
nature,  it  is  a  general  beneficence  to  which  we  have 
to  accommodate  ourselves.  It  rains  alike  upon  the 
just  and  the  unjust,  upon  the  sea  and  upon  the 
land,  upon  the  sown  field  and  upon  the  mown  hay 
—  a  broadcast,  wholesale  kind  of  providence. 

I  confess  that  from  the  course  of  life  and  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature  one  cannot  infer  the  existence  of 
a  Being  such  as  our  fathers  worshiped  —  a  kind  of 
omnipresent  man,  whose  relation  to  the  universe 
was  that  of  maker  and  governor. 

We  get  instead  the  conception  of  an  infinite 
power,  not  separable  from  the  universe,  but  one 
with  it,  as  the  soul  is  one  with  the  body,  which 
finally  expresses  itself  in  man  as  reason,  as  love,  as 
awe,  as  beauty,  as  aspiration,  as  righteousness;  in 
273 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

the  brute  world  as  instinct,  cunning,  ferocity,  and 
other  animal  traits;  in  the  material  world  as  law, 
system,  development,  power.  When  we  think  of 
God  in  any  kind  of  human  relation  to  the  universe, 
or  as  a  being  apart  from  it,  as  parent,  judge,  sover- 
eign, guide,  we  at  once  stumble  upon  this  problem 
of  evil,  and  invent  schemes  to  justify  God's  ways 
to  man,  to  excuse  or  gloss  over  the  cruelty,  the  suf- 
fering, the  injustice,  we  see  in  the  world ;  we  invent 
the  devil,  the  garden  of  Eden,  the  myth  of  the  fall 
of  man,  sin,  the  atonement,  the  judgment  day. 
These  things  flow  naturally  from  our  anthropomor- 
phic conception  of  God.  They  help  reconcile  the 
irreconcilable;  they  bridge  over  the  chasm.  But 
to  the  naturalistic  conception,  as  distinguished  from 
the  theological,  these  things  are  childish  dreams,  to 
be  put  from  us  as  we  put  away  other  childish  things. 
Sin  has  no  more  reality  than  the  negative  gravity 
that  Frank  Stockton  imagined,  redemption  no  more 
reality  than  the  rebellion  in  heaven  that  Milton 
invented,  and  heaven  and  hell  no  more  existence 
than  any  other  fabled  abode  of  the  ancient  world. 
To  science,  every  day  is  a  judgment  day,  eternity 
is  now  and  here,  heaven  lies  all  about  us,  all  laws 
are  celestial  laws.  God  is  literally  in  everything 
we  see  and  hear  and  feel,  in  every  flower  that  blows, 
and  not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground  without  his 
cognizance.  Your  days  are  appointed,  and  all  the 
hairs  of  your  head  are  numbered,  because  nothing 
274 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

goes  by  chance  in  this  universe.  Not  a  snowflake 
falls  but  its  form  and  its  course  are  determined  by 
forces  as  old  as  the  universe;  pitch  a  stone  from 
your  hand  and  the  elder  gods  know  exactly  where 
it  shall  alight.  Is  not  this  good  predestinarianism  ? 
Yes,  but  not  as  Jonathan  Edwards  saw  it;  it  is  as 
science  sees  it.  It  is  good  everlastingism  —  the  ways 
of  a  Power  without  variableness  or  shadow  of  turn- 
ing, which  Edwards  anthropomorphized  into  a  cruel, 
despotic,  almighty  man.  We  are  predestined  to 
heaven  or  hell  by  the  dispositions  we  inherit  from 
our  fathers,  by  the  environment  which  society  makes 
for  us,  by  the  age  and  country  in  which  we  live, 
and  by  the  strength  and  weakness  of  our  own  char- 
acters, which  again  are  the  result  of  forces  as  old  as 
the  race,  and  as  constant  and  impersonal  in  their 
activity  as  gravitation. 

The  rising  vapor  proves  gravitation  as  fully  as 
the  falling  rain.  The  wildest,  freest  thing  on  wings 
goes  only  its  appointed  way.  With  the  course  of 
the  swallow  hawking  for  insects  in  the  air,  or  with 
the  course  of  the  insects  themselves  soaring  in  the 
sunshine,  the  hand  of  chance  plays  no  part  any 
more  than  it  does  with  the  sailboat  obeying  wind 
and  current  on  yonder  bay,  which  again  is  a  good 
symbol  of  a  man's  course  throughout  this  world, 
impelled  by  impulses  inherited  from  his  fathers, 
and  awakened  by  the  circumstances  of  his  life. 

We  speak  of  the  chance  meeting  of  this  man  and 
275 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

that  woman  which  resulted  in  a  union  for  life,  and, 
so  far  as  their  conscious  wills  were  concerned,  the 
meeting  was  a  matter  of  chance;  but  if  we  could 
see  all  the  forces  that  have  been  at  work  to  bring 
them  together,  we  should  discover  that  there  was 
no  more  chance  about  it  than  about  the  conjunc- 
tion of  two  planets  in  the  evening  sky. 

Indeed,  our  lives  are  evidently  the  result  of  such 
a  play  and  interplay  of  forces  from  far  and  from 
near,  from  the  past  and  from  the  present,  from  the 
earth  and  from  the  heavens,  forces  so  subtle  and 
constant  and  so  beyond  the  reach  of  our  analysis, 
that  one  is  half  converted  to  the  claims  of  astro- 
logy, and  inclined  to  believe  that  the  fate  of  each 
of  us  was  written  in  the  heavens  before  the  foun- 
dations of  the  world. 

in 

Don't  you  suppose  that  if  the  trees  in  the  forest, 
the  grass  in  the  field,  the  fruit  in  the  orchard,  could 
for  a  moment  be  conscious  and  speak,  they  would 
each  and  all  say,  There  is  evil  here  also,  there  is 
crime,  there  is  sin,  there  is  struggle,  defeat,  and  death 
also?  One  plant  could  complain  that  there  is  an- 
other plant  stealing  from  it,  or  trespassing  upon  its 
territory  and  robbing  it;  another  is  being  crowded 
to  the  wall,  another  being  dwarfed  by  its  bigger  and 
more  sturdy  neighbor.  Cut  down  a  tree  in  the  forest, 
and  in  the  spring  a  half  dozen  or  more  shoots  start 
276 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

from  the  stump  to  replace  the  parent  trunk.  They 
all  grow  vigorously  the  first  season ;  the  whole  push 
of  the  complex  root  system  of  the  stump  is  behind 
them.  They  grow  vigorously  the  second  season, 
and  the  third,  and  maybe  for  several  years  more. 
But  the  competition  becomes  sharper  and  sharper; 
some  of  the  shoots,  from  causes  hard  to  penetrate, 
outstrip  their  fellows,  they  get  the  lead,  they  get 
more  light,  more  foliage,  and  this  enables  them  to 
take  up  more  nourishment  from  the  soil.  The  others 
lag,  then  stop,  then  die.  Then  the  struggle  among 
the  three  or  four  or  five  thrifty  shoots  goes  on  for 
a  few  years  longer,  till  some  of  them  are  distanced, 
and  finally  die  when  they  are  the  size  of  one's  leg. 
Then  two  or  three  remain  to  take  the  place  of  the 
parent  trunk.  We  witness  here  the  same  struggle 
that  we  witness  in  the  animal  world.  It  is  all  a 
question  of  the  means  of  subsistence ;  the  soil  can 
nourish  only  just  so  much  life,  and  the  fittest  or 
luckiest  gets  this  nourishment,  just  the  same  as 
when  you  throw  a  bone  to  a  pack  of  hungry  dogs. 
Sometimes  the  grain  will  "run  out"  the  weeds, 
and  sometimes  the  weeds  will  run  out  the  grain, 
or  the  grass.  The  cereals  that  depend  upon  man, 
and  that  he  depends  upon,  cannot  of  course  hold 
their  own  with  the  wild  denizens  of  the  soil.  Much 
care  and  culture  has  made  them  weak;  they  have 
grown  dependent;  they  must  be  fed  and  cosseted 
and  protected,  the  battle  against  the  foes  of  life 
277 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

must  be  fought  for  them.  All  these  cultivated  plants 
are  handicapped  by  a  burden  the  wild  things  do  not 
bear ;  the  wild  things  are  mainly  bent  only  upon  self- 
propagation:  to  this  end  their  seeds  are  small 
and  numerous ;  but  the  cultivated  grains  and  vege- 
tables bear  a  burden  of  food  for  man,  aside  from 
the  germ  necessary  to  their  propagation.  Wild 
rice  is  a  lean,  savage,  hirsute  product  compared 
with  the  cultivated  varieties;  but  the  potato  and 
the  onion  and  the  pippin  —  what  a  burden  of 
starch  and  of  other  elements  each  bears,  in  contrast 
with  the  wild  species ! 

Evil  comes  to  the  fruit  tree  in  the  orchard  in  the 
shape  of  frost  that  nips  the  fruit  buds,  or  of  worms 
that  eat  its  foliage,  or  in  the  shape  of  birds  that  cut 
out  the  heart  of  the  blossom,  or  in  the  shape  of 
insects  that  lay  their  eggs  in  the  baby  fruit,  or  in 
the  shape  of  fungus  growths  that  fasten  upon  it  and 
dwarf  it  or  mar  it.  Evil  threatens  and  sooner  or 
later  comes  to  everything  that  lives.  Evil  in  this 
sense  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  living  universe; 
there  is  no  escape  from  it.  A  world  of  competition, 
of  diverse  and  opposed  interests,  is  a  world  of 
struggle,  of  defeat,  of  death. 

After  the  ice  has  been  all  nicely  formed  in  the 
river,  a  miracle  of  crystallic  beauty  and  perfection, 
the  winds  or  the  tides  break  it  up  and  bring  chaos 
to  it.  But  the  cold  continues,  the  ice-packs  freeze 
together,  or  new  ice  forms,  the  ruin  of  the  first 
278 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

venture  of  the  frost  is  a  stepping-stone  in  the  sec- 
ond ;  the  river  is  again  covered  and  may  be  again 
broken  up,  but  by  and  by,  under  a  still  lower  tem- 
perature, the  thing  is  done  and  the  river  perma- 
nently frozen  over.  Then  the  struggle  is  between 
the  frost  and  the  sun  till,  in  the  spring,  the  latter 
wins. 

IV 

At  least  one  thing  is  certain  as  the  result  of  man's 
sojourn  on  this  planet:  he  is  becoming  more  and 
more  at  home  on  it,  more  and  more  on  good  terms 
with  the  nature  around  him.  His  childish  fear  and 
dread  of  it  is  largely  gone.  He  now  makes  playfel- 
lows of  things  which  once  filled  him  with  terror ;  he 
makes  servants  of  forces  that  he  once  thought  stood 
ready  to  devour  him ;  he  is  in  partnership  with  the 
sun  and  moon  and  all  the  hosts  of  heaven.  He  no 
longer  peoples  the  air  and  the  earth  with  evil  spirits. 
The  darkness  of  the  night,  or  of  caverns  and  forests, 
no  longer  conceals  malignant  powers  or  influences 
that  are  lying  in  wait  to  devour  him.  Even  Milton 
speaks  of 

"this  drear  wood, 

The  nodding  horror  of  whose  shady  brows 
Threats  the  forlorn  and  wandering  passenger." 

To  us  the  wood  is  filled  with  beauty  and  interest; 
the  mountain  is  a  challenge  to  climb  to  a  vaster  and 
higher  outlook,  and  the  abysmal  seas  hold  records 
we  would  fain  recover  and  peruse.  Evil  omens  and 
279 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

prognostications  have  disappeared.  Dread  of  Na- 
ture has  been  followed  by  curiosity  about  Nature, 
and  curiosity  has  been  followed  by  love.  Men  now 
love  Nature  as  I  fancy  they  have  never  loved  her 
before.  I  fancy  also  that  we  have  come  to  realize  as 
never  before  the  truth  of  the  Creator's  verdict  upon 
his  work:  "And  behold  it  was  good." 

To  what  do  we  owe  this  change  ?  To  the  growth 
of  the  human  reason  led  and  fostered  by  science. 
Science  has  showed  man  that  he  is  not  an  alien  in 
the  universe,  that  he  is  not  an  interloper,  that  he 
is  not  an  exile  from  another  sphere,  or  arbitrarily 
put  here,  but  that  he  is  the  product  of  the  forces 
that  surround  him.  Science  has  banished  the  arbi- 
trary, the  miraculous,  the  exceptional,  from  nature, 
and  instead  of  these  things  has  revealed  order,  sys- 
tem, and  the  irrefragable  logic  of  cause  and  effect. 
Instead  of  good  and  bad  spirits  contending  with 
one  another,  it  reveals  an  inevitable  beneficence 
and  a  steady  upward  progress.  It  shows  that  the 
universe  is  made  of  one  stuff,  and  that  no  atom 
can  go  amiss  or  lose  its  way. 

When  we  look  at  man  and  his  goings  and  comings 
at  a  far  enough  remove,  I  think  we  surely  see  that 
he  is  under  laws  and  influences  that  he  knows  not  of. 
In  the  Orient  he  shows  one  set  of  influences,  in  the 
Occident  another.  In  the  south  he  is  of  one  temper, 
in  the  north  of  another.  The  stamp  of  his  environ- 
ment, of  his  climate,  is  upon  him.  Born  in  one  age, 
280 


ALL  'S  RIGHT  WITH  THE  WORLD 

he  is  seized  with  the  spirit  of  adventure  and  plants 
colonies  and  kingdoms.  Born  in  another,  he  rusts 
out  at  home.  One  age  is  of  one  complexion,  another 
of  another ;  one  is  an  age  of  faith,  the  next  an 
age  of  skepticism;  the  enthusiasm  of  one  age  is 
the  joke  of  the  next.  We  are  puppets  all,  and  obey 
unseen  masters.  The  Time-spirit  sets  its  seal  upon 
us.  The  electric  currents  or  the  waves  of  vibration 
that  cause  the  steel  filings  to  spring  into  patterns 
are  like  the  influences  in  an  age  that  cause  men  to 
form  parties  and  groups  of  one  kind  or  another, 
swayed  by  a  common  impulse,  the  origin  of  which 
is  in  the  will  of  none  of  them. 

What,  then,  becomes  of  the  freedom  of  the  will 
of  which  we  are  all  conscious  ?  We  do  as  we  like. 
Yes,  but  what  determines  our  liking  ?  In  this  free- 
dom fate  is  deftly  concealed.  Our  choice  is  along 
the  lines  of  forces  or  inborn  tendencies  of  which 
we  are  unconscious.  We  are  free  to  do  as  our  in- 
herited traits,  our  temperament,  our  environment, 
our  training,  the  influence  of  the  climate  over  us, 
and  the  geography  and  geology  about  us  and  be- 
neath us  decide.  But  these  things  are  vital  in  us, 
and  therefore  we  are  unconscious  of  them.  Hence 
our  sense  of  free  choice  is  not  obstructed ;  we  still 
do  as  we  like,  only  something  beyond  our  wills 
determines  what  we  shall  like. 

The  intellectual  nature  of  man  was  developed 
long  before  his  moral  nature.  His  sense  of  beauty, 
281 


LEAF  AND  TENDRIL 

of  art,  of  ornament,  is  older  than  his  sense  of  justice 
or  mercy.  Indeed,  he  was  a  religious  being  before 
he  was  a  moral  being.  He  worshiped  and  offered 
sacrifices  before  he  dealt  justly  and  humanely  with 
his  fellow. 

Unless  what  we  mean  by  good  prevailed  over  the 
bad,  we  should  not  be  here.  If  some  sort  of  order 
and  peace  had  not  come  out  of  the  primal  warring 
of  the  elements,  man  could  not  have  appeared. 
The  waters  have  been  gathered  together,  the  conti- 
nents have  been  lifted  up,  the  vapors  have  learned 
to  form  clouds,  the  soil  has  been  formed,  and  the 
benediction  of  the  flowers  and  of  the  grass  is  upon 
the  hills.  The  destructive  elemental  forces  have 
subsided.  In  nearly  all  parts  of  the  earth  man  can 
subsist.  The  benevolence  of  Providence  is  seen  in 
this  general,  inevitable  course  of  nature.  Right 
actions  meet  with  their  reward ;  health  and  whole- 
ness are  possible;  deal  fairly  and  squarely  with 
Nature,  and  you  always  get  the  worth  of  your 
money.  We  know  the  conditions  of  disease;  we 
know  the  conditions  of  health.  The  ways  of  the 
Eternal  are  appointed,  and  we  may  find  them  out. 

Truly  to  obey  the  will  of  God  is  our  salvation, 
but  we  must  look  for  this  will,  not  in  some  book 
or  creed,  but  in  the  order  of  the  universe,  in  the 
sequence  of  cause  and  effect. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


AIKEN,  CATHERINE,  her  method 
of  training  the  perceptions  of 
school-children,  11,  12. 

Andrena,  13,  14. 

Animals,  human  traits  in,  125-153, 
190-192;  homing  instinct  in, 
126,  127;  superior  to  man  in  cer- 
tain powers,  126,  127;  telepathy 
in,  127,  128;  unreasoning  anger 
in,  129,  130;  the  training  of  wild, 
131-133;  courtship  among,  134, 
135;  gregarious  instincts  of,  135, 
136;  maternal  affection  in,  137; 
conjugal  affection  in,  137,  138; 
hermits  among,  138;  hostility 
towards  strangers  among,  138; 
grief  and  sympathy  among,  139, 
140;  fear  in,  140,  141;  revenge 
among,  142,  143;  notions  of 
death  among,  146;  deception  in, 
146;  cooperation  in,  146,  147; 
leadership  among,  147,  148; 
worry  among,  148;  terror  among, 
149;  play  of,  149,  150;  imita- 
tiveness  in,  150;  the  reasoning 
powers  of,  155-169;  Hobhouse's 
experiments  on,  160-162;  rela- 
tion of  language  to  intelligence 
in,  163,164;  instincts  in,  169-172, 
177-198;  their  dependence  on 
Nature,  189,  190;  the  tools  of, 
195. 

Apes,  relationship  with  man,  222- 
224. 

April,  joys  of,  35-37. 

Arbutus,  praise  of,  33-35. 

Ash  tree,  173. 

Autobiographic,  241-261. 

Baynes,  Ernest  Harold,  his  young 

coons,  180,  181. 
Bear,   a    story  told   by  President 

Roosevelt,  128,  129;  a  trained, 

132. 


Bear,  grizzly,  a  story  told  by 
President  Roosevelt,  142,  143. 

Beard,  Dan,  his  "Animal  Book," 
160;  his  observation  of  an  ich- 
neumon-fly, 185. 

Beaver,  lack  of  real  intelligence  in, 
180,  194. 

Bees,  a  burrowing  bee,  13,  14; 
Fabre's  experiment  with  a  bee, 
185. 

Birch,  growing  on  rocks,  173-175. 

Birds,  nesting-times  of  various,  31 ; 
love,  alarm,  and  fellowship  notes 
of,  40,  41;  courtship  among,  43, 
91-98,  134,  135;  coloration  of, 
53-100;  nesting-materials  of,  77, 
78;  the  gregarious,  88-90,  135, 
136;  their  manner  of  carrying 
things,  116,  117;  conjugal  affec- 
tion in,  137,  138;  home  sense  in, 
138;  learning  songs,  150;  taste 
in,  151-153;  cause  and  use  of 
song  in,  151,  152. 

Bluebird  (Sialia  si'aZis),  a  story  of 
love  and  rivalry,  38-43;  notes  of, 
40,  41 ;  coloration  of,  68;  decima- 
tion and  recovery  of,  84. 

Bostock,  Frank  C.,  his  "Training 
of  Wild  Animals,"  131,  132. 

Brakeman,  an  unintelligent,  181. 

Browning,  Robert,  a  text  from, 
263. 

Business,  256. 

Carlyle,    Thomas,    on    evolution, 

215-219;  quoted,  215. 
Casarita,  181,  182. 
Chance,  275,  276. 
Chippy.  See  Sparrow,  chipping. 
Cicada,  17. 

Clover,  red,  fragrance  of,  26,  27. 
Color  in  animals,  a  study  of,  51- 

100;  effect  of  locality  on,  59,  60; 

effect  of  cold  en,  64,  65;  effect  of 


285 


INDEX 


darkness  on,  65;  effect  of  domes- 
tication on,  68-70;  gradation  of, 
71,  72;  stamp  of  environment 
on,  78-84;  influence  of  the  male 
instinct  of  reproduction  on,  87, 
88,  91-100;  influence  of  the  gre- 
garious instinct  on,  87-91. 

Coloration,  protective,  51-100. 

Columbine,  35. 

Coon.   See  Raccoon. 

Cows,  path-making  on  hillsides  by, 
156,  157;  a  cow  opening  a  gate, 
157, 158;  milk-manufacturing  by, 
159;  a  cow  and  a  stuffed  calf, 
180. 

Crabs,  courtship  of,  99. 

Creeper,  brown  (Certhia  familiaris 
americana),  coloration  and  hab- 
its of,  86,  87. 

Crow  (Corvus  brachyrhynchos) ,  re- 
lation of  coloration  to  habits  of, 
90;  its  manner  of  picking  up 
food  from  water,  116,  117. 

Cuckoo,  30. 

Darwin,  Charles,  65,  72;  his  theory 
of  sexual  selection,  92-100;  rea- 
son and  imagination  in,  112; 
quoted  on  taste  in  birds,  151, 
167;  quoted  on  the  casarita,  181, 
182;  Carlyle  on,  215,  218. 

Dogs,  biting  a  stone,  131 ;  anger  in, 
131;  human  traits  in,  143-146; 
John  Muir's  dog,  149;  Hob- 
house's  experiments  with,  161; 
hunting  woodchucks,  162;  lack 
of  reasoning  in,  188,  189. 

Ducks,  70,  71 ;  a  prodigal,  192,  193. 

Dust,  the  substance  of  all  things, 
199. 

Eagle,  117. 

Eaton,  Daniel  Cady,  22. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  275. 

Electricity,  209. 

Elephants,  Hobhouse's  experi- 
ments with,  160,  161. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  quoted, 
242. 

Erythronium,  or  fawn  lily,  185, 
186. 

Eternity,  238. 

Eugenie,  Empress,  6. 


Evil,  the  origin  of,  268-270;  good 
impossible  without,  270-272; 
no  conspiracy  of,  273;  the  uni- 
versal struggle  against,  276-279. 

Evolution,  215-240. 

Fabre,  J.  H.,  his  experiments  on  a 

wasp  and  a  bee,  184,  185. 
Farm,  the  call  of  the,  36-38. 
Farmer,  the,  and  his  fields,  45-50. 
Fear,  in  wild  and  domestic  animals, 

69,  70. 

Fields,  the  farmer's,  45-50. 
Fire,  origin  of,  235. 
Flamingo    (Phcenicopterus    ruber\ 

89. 

Flicker.   See  High-hole. 
Flycatcher,    great    crested    (Myi- 

archus  crinitus),  23. 
Fox,  109,  114. 
Fox,  arctic,  57. 
Freedom  of  will,  281. 
Freeman,  Edward  Augustus,  110-- 

112. 

Frog,  wood,  66. 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  110-112. 

Geddes,  Patrick,  and  J.  Arthur 
Thomson,  their  "  Evolution  of 
Sex,"  100. 

Geologic  time,  236,  237. 

Goat,  mountain,  58. 

God,  the  first  cause,  228;  the  im- 
manent, 233;  Cardinal  New- 
man's view  of,  265;  created  by 
man  in  his  image,  266;  in  the 
human  heart,  266,  267;  as  seen 
in  the  universe,  273,  274;  his  will 
to  be  found  in  the  order  of  the 
universe,  282. 

Grasshoppers,  colors  of,  66. 

Gregariousness,  its  influence  on  the 
colors  of  animals,  88-91 ;  in  man 
and  animals,  135,  136. 

Groos,  Karl,  149. 

Grosbeak,  rose-breasted  (Zame- 
lodia  ludoviciana} ,  32,  76. 

Grouse,  ruffed  (Bonasa  umbellus), 
coloration  and  feeding  habits  of, 
87. 


Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert,  his  story 
ef  a  cow,  180. 


286 


INDEX 


Hare,  northern,  63. 

Heron,  great  blue  (Ardea  herodias), 

relation  of  coloration  and  habits 

of,  90. 
High-hole,     or     flicker     (Colaptes 

auratus  luteus),  182. 
Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  his  "  Mind  and 

Evolution,"  160-162. 
Homing  instinct,  the,  126,  127. 
Hornaday,  William  T.,  177. 
Hornet,  black,  162. 
Hornets,  197. 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  159,  163, 

190;  and  Carlyle,  215,  218,  224, 

237;  a  fighter,  250,  265;  quoted, 

207,  208,  249. 

Ichneumon-fly,  185. 

Immortality,  251. 

Infinite,  the,  238-240. 

Instinct,  and  reason,  177,  178;  a 
kind  of  intelligence,  179;  au- 
tomatism of,  179-188;  the  re- 
sponse to,  189;  the  sufficiency 
of,  196,  198. 

June,  the  opening  of,  26-32. 
Keller,  Helen,  11. 

Lemming,  64,  186,  187. 

Life,  first  appearance  of,  208;  the 
origin  of,  229-236;  the  mechan- 
ico-chemical  theory  of,  232-234; 
positive  and  negative  sides  of, 
268,  269;  a  balance  between 
good  and  evil  forces,  269. 

Life  (of  man),  meaning  of,  241-261. 

Lily,  fawn.   See  Erythronium. 

Long,  William  J.,  198. 

Loon  (Gavia  imber),  118. 

Lost  persons,  tendency  to  turn  in 
one  direction,  20. 

Love,  sharpens  the  senses,  2;  the 
measure  of  life,  3. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  218. 

Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  175. 

Man,  ancestry  of,  215-224,  226- 
229,  236,  237;  at  home  in  the 
universe,  221;  relationship  with 
the -anthropoid  apes,  222-224; 
a  part  of  nature,  267;  more  and 


more  at  home  in  the  world,  279, 
280;  development  of  the  moral 
nature  of,  281,  282. 

Meadowlark  (Sturnella  magna) , 
notes  of,  35. 

Mind,  in  matter,  212,  213. 

Morality,  truth  in,  252. 

Morgan,  C.  Lloyd,  quoted  on  rea- 
son in  animals,  178. 

Morgan,  L.  H.,  194. 

Moth,  expanding  wings  of  a,  15, 
16;  a  yellowish-white,  17. 

Moth,  Cecropia,  cocoon  of,  19. 

Moth,  Promethea,  cocoon  of,  18. 

Muir,  John,  149. 

Mushrooms,  colors  of,  67. 

Natural  history,  truth  and  false- 
hood in,  101-115, 122, 123. 

Nature,  an  inexhaustible  store- 
house, 3;  demoralized  by  man, 
69;  tendency  to  harmony  in, 
79,  80;  truth  and  falsehood  in 
writing  about,  101-115,  122, 
123;  the  school  of,  197;  a  spend- 
thrift, 246;  wins  in  every  game, 
246,  247. 

Nature  fakers,  101-115,  122,  123. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  265,  266. 

Nuthatch,  white-bellied  (Sitta  caro- 
linensis) ,  colors  and  habits  of,  86, 
87. 

Observation,  considered  as  an  art, 
1,2;  love  the  secret  of,  2,  3;  dif- 
ference between  people  in  powers 
of,  4-10;  training  of  powers  of, 
11,12;  sharpened  by  the  thought, 
21-23;  power  of  accurate,  pos- 
sessed by  few,  116,  118. 

Observer,  a  close,  7-9. 

Orchards,  blossoming,  31,  32. 

Oriole,  puncturing  grapes,  21. 

Oriole,  Baltimore  (Icterus  galbula), 
compared  with  orchard  oriole, 
85;  two  pairs  fighting,  191. 

Oriole,  orchard  (Icterus  spurius), 
compared  with  Baltimore  oriole, 
85,  86. 

Otter,  160,  161. 


Peacock,  54. 

Petrifaction  and  putrefaction,  3. 


287 


INDEX 


Pheasant,  Argus,  94-96. 
Phoebe-bird  (Sayornis  phcebe) ,  notes 

of,  36;  nest  of,  193,  194. 
Pigeon,  passenger,  or  wild  pigeon 

(Ectopistes  migratorius) ,  76. 
Plants,    apparent    intelligence   of, 

171-175. 

Providences,  244,  245. 
Ptarmigan,  64. 

Quail,  or  bob-white  (Colinus  vir- 

ginianus),  53. 
Quail,  valley,  or  valley  partridge 

(Lophortyx     califordicus     valli- 

cola),  57. 

Raccoon,  its  habit  of  washing  its 

food,  180,  181. 
Rays  of  light  in  openings  in  clouds, 

20,  21. 
Reason,  the  dawn  of,  165-169;  the 

appeal  to,  253.  See  also  Animals, 

the  reasoning  powers  of. 
Religion,  the  truth  in,  251,  252. 
Reproductive    instinct,    its    influ- 
ence on  the  colors  of  animals,  87, 

88,  91-100. 
Road-runner     (Geococcyx    califor- 

nianus),  54. 
Roberts,  Charles  G.  D.,  113,  114, 

198. 
Robin    (Merula    migratoria) ,    43; 

abundance  and  adaptability  of, 

84,  85;  food  of,  85;  baffled  and 

delayed    in    nest-building,    130, 

131;  courtship  of,  135. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  bear  stories 

told    by,    128,    129,    142,    143; 

quoted   on  antelope,    147,  148; 

and  a  frightened  deer,  149. 
Roots,    apparent    intelligence    of, 

173-175. 
Ross,  Sir  John,  64. 

Science,  shows  man  that  he  is  not 

an  alien  in  nature,  280. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  and  nature,  9- 

10. 

Seal,  fur,  148. 
Selection,  sexual,  92-100. 
Sharp,  Dallas  Lore,  his  tame  coon, 

181. 
Sheep,  laying  out  paths,  156,  157. 


Sight,  the  beginning  of  the  sense 
of,  168. 

Simple  life,  the,  241,  242,  260, 
261. 

Skunk,  carrying  one  by  the  tail, 
103. 

Snake,  swallowing  young,  18. 

Soil,  the,  the  grist  of  the  gods, 
the  medium  through  which  all 
things  pass,  199-209,  212;  the 
divine,  203,  215-240. 

Soul,  the,  physical  origin  of,  233, 
234. 

Sparrow,  chipping,  or  social  spar- 
row (Spizella  socialis),  28. 

Sparrow,  English,  or  house  spar- 
row (Passer  domesticus) ,  court- 
ship of,  98,  135;  an  instance  of 
blind  instinct  in,  187. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  149. 

Spider,  trap-door,  183,  184. 

Spider,  wolf,  the  den  of  a,  14,  15. 

Spiritual,  the,  has  its  roots  in  the 
carnal,  221. 

Spring,  beginning  of,  25. 

Squirrel,  red,  harvesting  butter- 
nuts, 17,  18;  playing,  149,  150; 
and  a  drain  pipe,  180. 

Squirrels,  position  of  feet  in  de- 
scending trees,  5. 

Stone  walls,  48-50. 

Stones,  clearing  fields  of,  46-48. 

Struggle  for  existence,  the,  276- 
279. 

Summer,  beginning  of,  25-32;  the 
bridal  day  of,  27,  28. 

Sundew,  158. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  quoted,  26. 

Thomson,  J.  Arthur.  See  Patrick 
Geddes. 

Thoreau,  Henry  D.,  as  an  ob- 
server, 6,  22;  and  the  farm,  38; 
and  the  "woodcock's  evening 
hymn,"  121;  his  eye  more  re- 
liable than  his  ear,  121,  122;  his 
instinct  for  the  truth  in  nature, 
122;  his  use  of  the  imagination, 
122,  123;  quoted,  38. 

Thrush,  wood  (Hylocichla  muste- 
lina),  131. 

Thrushes,  ground,  56. 

Toad,  color  of,  66. 


288 


INDEX 


Trees,  twisting  growth  of,  20. 
Truth,  in  natural  history,  101-115; 

one  man's  and  all  men's,  250- 

252. 

Universe,  the,  pervaded  with 
mind,  176,  213;  vital  forces  of, 
209-213;  logical,  224;  the  ob- 
ject of,  238-240;  has  our  well- 
being  at  heart,  273. 

Victoria,  Queen,  6. 

Vines,  method  of  climbing  of,  19. 

Waiting,  253-256. 
Wallace,    Alfred  Russel,  on  pro- 
tective coloration,  54,  63;  on  the 


effect  of  locality  on  color,  59,  60, 

76;  on  sexual  selection,  92. 
Wasp,  Fabre's  experiment  with  a, 

184,  185. 

Water-thrush,  notes  of,  35. 
Wealth,  the  craze  for,  257;  giving 

away,  257,  258;  a  burden,  258, 

259;  equalizing  the  distribution 

of,  259,  260. 
Whitman,  Walt,  quoted,  211,  219, 

220,  226,  248,  263. 
Woodcock  (Philohela  minor),  flight 

song  of,  119-121. 
World,  the,   an   interesting  place, 

242. 

Wrens,  cock  nests  of,  97. 
Wundt,  Wilhelm  M.,  178. 


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AUTUMN 
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FEB-9'59 

, 


^~ 


Je15'5PAR 


MAY  1 6  I960 


UN      2   1960 


LD  21-50m-8,'57 
(.C8481slO)476 


General  Library 
University  of  Calif' 
Berkeley 


